Sup Holmes every Sunday at 2:30pm EST!
[Sup Holmes is a weekly talk show for people that make great videogames. It airs live every Sunday at 4pm EST onYouTube, and can be found in Podcast form onLibsynandiTunes.]
Former Sup Holmes guest Zoe Quinn recently announced that she’s writing an autobiography that’s already been optioned for a film adaptation. As neat as that is, it seems like a missed opportunity. It would make more sense for the book to be made into an autobiographical game than a movie. Coincidentally, two more recent Sup Holmes guests did just that. Though their games aren’t literal auto-biographies, they are clearly charged with metaphors and mechanics that work to express many of their personal life experiences.
Natalia Figueroa’s Fran Bow is a point-and-click horror fairy tale that draws upon trauma events that she suffered as a teenager. She first devised the game’s story during those teen years, but it wasn’t until she made it to her twenties that she was able to fully master her story through game design, and in doing so, mastering the painful experiences that inspired it. We talked to Natalia about that, about how mixing cuteness with horror helped her to tolerate the darker parts of the development process, how her background in animation and her relationship with her husband inspired her to make games, and a lot more.
Jane Friedhoff’s Slam City Oracles couldn’t be more different than Fran Bow on the surface, though both games share a underlying look at the power that comes from letting loose. More than anything, Slam City is about being unafraid to take up space and release pent up aggression, two things Jane has been challenged with in both her career and her personal life. We talked about that, her lifelong love of game development, the pros and cons of the increasingly personality driven game scene, and tons of other stuff.
Thanks again to Jane and Natalia for being on the show, and be sure to tune in next week when we welcome Mark from Rogue Snail Games (Chroma Squad) to the program.