Gameplay demo
A two-minute walkthrough of exploration, clue reconstruction, and narrative interaction.
MOUNTAINS
大山
Visual noveland documentary
Project overview
Research translated into a playable narrative.
MOUNTAINS examines how forced marriage and trafficking are represented when direct violence is sustained by structural inequality and culturally normalised expectations. The project brought literature and Chinese judicial records into dialogue with field inquiry conducted across three provinces.
These materials informed a visual novel built around three connected forms of interaction. Shifts between partial viewpoints show how the same event may be understood differently depending on a character's position. Players gather and combine environmental evidence to reconstruct incomplete accounts, while a repeated narrative loop returns them to earlier decisions after an attempted escape fails. Hand-drawn environments and documentary footage ground the fictional narrative in situated research. Together, these elements examine how social conditions restrict individual agency and shape what a person is able to know or change.
- Role
- Independent researcher, writer, illustrator, interaction designer, and developer
- Format
- Serious visual novel and field documentary
- Outcome
- A playable narrative of 100,000 Chinese characters supported by an original hand-drawn visual system
Field research documentary
Field inquiry and qualitative research established the narrative and visual foundations of the game.
Experimental film
Produced alongside the Research through Design process to explore atmosphere and visual direction.
Project details.
Full documentation
Read the complete portfolio.
The complete portfolio documents how field research informed the game’s design.