Personasmith: An interactive game about counterfeit and forgery

Project partners: Thunkd and the University of York

Leeds-based video game developers Thunkd have used XR Stories funding to produce a prototype for their upcoming project, Personasmith.

Click here to view the video with audio description.

Thunkd is a new, independent, video game development studio aiming to become synonymous with high-quality, short-form, ‘evening-sized’ games and experiences. They create interactive games focusing on ‘time poor’ audiences who want high-quality content that can be consumed from start-to-finish in a short space of time.

To deliver the project, Thunkd collaborated with academics from the University of York.

Personasmith is a game about counterfeiting and forgery. It explores a person’s journey down the ‘wrong path’ as their (mostly) good intentions attract the attention of the wrong kind of people.

In the game, players help out people in the community, creating false documents, re-imagining identities, and manipulating the truth. They will ‘meet’ the people they choose to help in the game and find out their stories, giving a glimpse into the hardships and social injustices that brought them to their current situation.

Players will be asked to make moral choices that could change the direction of those they are trying to help in the game. They will then deal with role reversal as they become the victim whose fate lies in the hands of others.

The R&D project enabled the team at Thunkd to explore a new gaming concept in a high quality, short-form format. They developed the story through a writer’s room and created several playable tests, as well as working towards producing a full game.

This project was funded through the OpenXR funding call.

Categories: Games