ASD
ASD is an autobiographical roguelike, solo-developed in Unity, about the difficulty of navigating daily life as a person on the autism spectrum. It was one of six games selected to be shown at Playcrafting's Women in Games: Demo and Play Night 2017, and was also featured at the Five Points Festival in 2017 and at GaymerX in 2018. It is available to download for Windows and Mac at itch.io.
The player crosses city blocks full of energy-draining stimuli.
In ASD, the player takes on the role of Lucy Garvey, a young autistic woman who finds her daily routine interrupted when the subway on which she normally commutes has to let all the passengers off at an earlier stop. Now, she has to navigate the blocks remaining to get to school without having a meltdown or becoming completely overwhelmed, all while dealing with sensory overload and her own stress. The game requires you to make careful choices to manage your stress/emotion level, navigate the best route down the sidewalk to avoid interactions and sensations that might be triggering, and learn from repeated attempts what the best way is to proceed.
ASD was initially developed for an assignment during my time at the New York Film Academy's Game Design intensive. At the time, I had not played many roguelikes before and was not terribly familiar with the genre. As my teacher described the genre as being defined by difficulty, procedural generation, and failing over and over until you learned the patterns and how to survive in the environment, I had the thought "that sounds like my everyday life".
I was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum at the age of 21. It came as an enormous relief to me, as it helped to recontextualize and explain difficulties I'd had all my life with things like sensory overload and social interaction.
Decisions the player makes effect how much energy they have.
Random events can trigger decision points.
I view games as tremendous tools for education, understanding, and empathy. While someone who does not have autism will never be able to truly know what it is like to be on the spectrum, I believe that video games' capacity to put players somewhat more literally in the experiences of others can help to create that kind of understanding.
And at the times that I have shown this game at festivals, I have found that this is the case. Perhaps the greatest compliment I have ever received on my work was from a woman at the Five Points Festival who played ASD. She told me that she had a young child on the spectrum, and thanked me for making a game that could help her understand what her child was going through, and that could show her child that they were not alone in those struggles.