Abstract
Proxima is a visual novel game where you oversee a team of robots that have crash-landed on an alien planet. Your task is to survive the elements and complete an unknown mission. The biggest challenge you face, however, is that your team is becoming more human. They are playful, curious, and caring, and soon enough, you wonder: How can you possibly keep them focused on the mission when they have finally gotten the chance to be alive?
The game begins as a classic sci-fi romp through space but quickly transitions into some- thing that is more self-aware and leads players to question how systems in our own lives lead us to dehumanize ourselves—and each other—for the sake of some enigmatic sense of self-worth. Within its subtext, it is firmly queer, anticolonialist, and anticapitalist.
I am focusing this game towards young adults, especially those struggling to find their own identity. I am building Proxima from the ground up to be accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds with no assumptions of prior experience. My goal is to expand the niche genre of visual novels to a wider and more diverse audience.
Proxima began with a problem of my own: a crisis of identity externalized as an android, an empty vessel that exists only to work. I imagined, given free reign, what could that android grow into? Who could they become? What if they could learn to love themselves?
As a bisexual, nonbinary individual, this project is deeply personal to me as I hope to use robots as a defamiliarization tool to represent how it feels to struggle with your own body as a result of your identity. I want players to love these robots in all of their queerness and to develop empathy for them that carries into their own lives.
In Proxima, you don’t just witness the cast of robotic characters struggle with their own humanity. You are their boss, the artificial intelligence of the spaceship the crew arrived on and the only person they answer to. Every scrape, dent, and lost limb is a direct result of the decisions that you made for the sake of the mission. The way in which you inter- act with them influences their relationships to their own humanity, whether they think of themselves as fully autonomous individuals or merely objects of labor, and these paths have their own unique upsides and downsides.
The game you can play right now takes only about 30-45 minutes to play through, being a vertical slice of the free demo I’m developing which itself represents a small portion of the full story that I have outlined. My goal is to show the technical possibilities of this game, including dialogue choices with both short- and long-term consequences and animated characters and environments that feel truly alive.
Artist Statement
My identity, my art practice, and my approach to understanding the world are all unques- tionably defined by the subject of narrative. I consider myself a storyteller first and fore- most. I believe that storytelling has incredible potential as a device for overcoming trauma and processing complicated emotions. Stories help me to get in touch with my younger self, to recontextualize my experiences, to bridge the gap of years of mental illness and self-loathing and to understand who I am now in the wake of all of that. It took me much too long to find myself; I didn’t realize I was queer and transgender until the end of my teenaged years. I have a burning desire to represent LGBTQ individuals of all backgrounds in everything I create so that kids growing up like I did will get more opportunities to see themselves in the media they consume.
Proxima is a visual novel game where you oversee a team of robots that have crash-landed on an alien planet. Your task is to survive the elements and complete an unknown mission. The biggest challenge you face, however, is that your team is becoming more human. They are playful, curious, and caring, and soon enough, you wonder: How can you possibly keep them focused on the mission when they have finally gotten the chance to be alive?
The game begins as a classic sci-fi romp through space but quickly transitions into some- thing that is more self-aware and leads players to question how systems in our own lives lead us to dehumanize ourselves—and each other—for the sake of some enigmatic sense of self-worth. Within its subtext, it is firmly queer, anticolonialist, and anticapitalist.
While Proxima isn’t about me, it is absolutely a reflection of who I am and the things I care about. These robots transform from miserable objects of labor into fully realized individ- uals with their own desires and feelings. They are queer, they are fiercely critical of the social structures they have inherited from humanity, and they are full of joy. Through their journey, they prove that anyone can eventually learn to love themselves--even me.
I am focusing this game towards young adults, especially those struggling to find their own identity. I am building Proxima from the ground up to be accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds with no assumptions of prior experience. Recent independent games such as Pyre and Hades have successfully combined visual novels with the action game genre. Likewise, Proxima intersects with the survival genre but with a unique narrative
focus. I believe that the audience of visual novel games can be expanded by appealing to queer and other marginalized groups.
I hope that Proxima will be the first of many video game projects that I undertake over the rest of my career. I want to strengthen the view of games as another art form rather than simply being entertainment. I have approached Proxima from the ground up as a work of art and I hope that it will prove to be worthy of critical analysis for its intent and cultural impact
