Growing Indigenous worlds in games

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Among the presentations in last month's Game Devs of Color Expo was Achimostawinan Games' talk on Growing Indigenous Worlds in Games, which explored the themes of reappropriation and combating stereotypes of creative works for Indigenous people.

Creative leads Meagan Byrne and Sadekaronhes Esquivel also spoke about their game design inspirations for the March release Hill Agency: Purity Decay, as well as some of their frustrations.

Hill Agency takes place in the year 2762, and players assume the role of private investigator Meeygen Hill, who lives in one of the last remaining major cities in North America.

Regarding how the developers settled on the setting, Byrne started to explain with a question, "What would we do if cities just emptied because of some major natural disasters and Indigenous people reappropriated them? What would these cities look like? How would they feel?"

"A lot of [these thoughts] came from my feelings of watching things, like Blade Runner, and all these cyberpunk games where they just [feature orientalism]."

Byrne noted that Turtle Island, what some people recognize as North America, is home to many native plants. So, the development duo incorporated plants everywhere in the environments and buildings of Hill Agency to visually show this connection to flora and fauna.

"The plants are everywhere; they should be everywhere," they said.

The studio acknowledged that they were working on keeping the game authentic from an Indigenous point of view. However, they noted some negative feedback regarding using a city for the game's backdrop.

Byrne said, "What's the point of tearing down anything if these are perfectly good,