This Is A Game About Aliens

This Is A Game About Aliens. was made by Kennedy Ritchie, Zining Guo, Allie Runser, Connor McCandless, and Noah Droege as a final project for the CMLIT 191N: Introduction to Video Game Culture course at Penn State University taught by Camila Gutierrez-Fuentes. The following is an excerpt from the essay that accompanied the game:

In creating our video game, we wanted to immerse the player in a ridiculous storyline while also acknowledging real-world themes of stereotyping and prejudice. In order to show those ideas, we decided on a science fiction choice-based story about discovering aliens. The science fiction aspect would allow us to place the player in a strange version of space where they would be confronted by aliens and other new obstacles that they would never encounter in their lives. On the other hand, the game could treat aliens as something strange and different, just as many people treat each other when they don’t share the same culture or experiences. However, throughout this space journey, the game reprimands the player for treating the aliens as something other than normal. By using a choice mechanic instead of simply guiding the player through a narrative, we want to give players more control, and as a result, more responsibility for their actions. We aimed to create a fun atmosphere that also served to express the importance of including and accepting people with different experiences.