Hatch

An immersive storytelling game exploring a young trans girl's experiences with gender dysphoria.

About

Hatch is a storytelling game designed for young adults (transgender and cisgender alike) to explore themes of gender dysphoria, coming of age, and preparing for college.

The game follows the experiences of a young trans girl in her senior year of highschool, just as she begins to question her gender identity and explore with her presentation. Throughout the game, the player must make important decisions between the support of her community and her desire to avoid gender dysphoria, and these decisions impact the larger story.

Creating the Game

Hatch was initially pitched during a Friday night brainstorming session as a "storytelling game about transgender people." The game was inspired in large part by FLORENCE, an interactive story game by Annapurna Interactive.

The rest of Friday was spent brainstorming the game features and storyline. By the end of Friday, we had a concept, had split into roles (one artist and two programmers) and organized the game's program architecture.

Saturday morning we got back to work, beginning with boilerplate JavaFX code and building up to the organization we had planned the night before. By Saturday evening, we began designing the main artwork and polishing the code. By Sunday at dawn, the game was complete.

The process of building Hatch was immensely challenging. One of our biggest obstacles was our directionless start - we spent a long time brainstorming ideas without committing to any game concept or storyline. Had we committed earlier, we would have more time to work on our other planned developments (see below).

What's Next for Hatch?

Currently, Hatch follows a high schooler's first quarter of highschool. We have an outline for how the game would continue through winter, spring, and summer, and plan on implementing this expansion if we have the time to do so. Throughout the following seasons, the art will gradually fade from monochrome to full color.

Additional directions for further development include incorporating music and designing new artwork that is greater in number and detail.