https://www.inverse.com/gaming/serenity-forge-10-year-anniversary
"In 2008, Zhenghua “Z” Yang was diagnosed with a rare condition in which his
body couldn’t form enough blood platelets, meaning his blood couldn’t clot and
even a simple cut could be fatal. He was hospitalized for two years, then sent
home to rest without real hope for recovery. In this time, he gamed for hours
on end.
League of Legends,
World of Warcraft,
Final Fantasy,
Chrono
Trigger,
Minecraft. What else was he to do? And with time, somewhat
miraculously, he recovered and was able to return to college. When he thinks
back on getting through it all — mentally at least — those games loom large.
“My first year of college, I thought to myself, ‘Well, these games that I was
playing, like
League of Legends, they’re not really made to help me right,
but they ended up saving my life,’” Yang says. “So what if we start making
video games with the intention of helping other people? What kind of power is
that able to unlock?”
Now 34, Yang is CEO and co-founder of a unique gaming company, Serenity Forge,
that makes deeply emotional, usually weird games that push the idea of what
gaming can do. Case in point,
Doki Doki Literature Club, a game built around
the idea of reading poetry with a group of school girls and then… well, you
kind of have to play it for yourself to get it. (
Doki Doki was created by
Team Salvato; Serenity Forge stepped in to help release a premium “Plus”
edition of the game in 2021).
Now in its 10th year, the Colorado-based company is set to do it again with the
upcoming
Roman Sands RE:Build, which is such a strange game that it too is
hard to describe with words. It’s part philosophical puzzle, part apocalyptic
adventure, part psychedelic journey — not to mention part service industry
simulator."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
