ESCORT
YOURSELF
OUT

I develop small indie games in my free time and have made well over 20 at this point. This is one of my earliest publicly-released games, and it has received a good deal of indie recognition over the years. Inspired by games in which the player escorts a non-playable character through a dangerous space, "Escort Yourself Out" asks the player to help their "childhood self" navigate emotionally-loaded or triggering environments. It has been downloaded over 7,000 times and has a rating of 4.6 out of 5 on Itch.io.

An animation showing a child and an adult, standing to the side, next to the words Escort Yourself Out.

Background info:

"Escort Yourself Out" was part of a senior honors thesis project completed at UC Davis. During this project, I looked at practices like art therapy and narrative formation through journaling, as well as the interactive medium of a video game, to ask if creating autobiographical games could be a therapeutic practice. I created two games, "Escort Yourself Out" and a text-based game called "In My Friend Carrie's Car." I studied game developers like Nina Freeman and Anna Anthropy, both of whom have created well-known autobiographical or semi-autobiographical games, and research papers by Dr. Kristin Neff on the topic of self-compassion.

An animation showing a child and an adult walking through a space, past a large speech bubble. A smaller speech bubble appears saying I'll stay with you until you feel okay.
An animation of a person sitting in bed, on their laptop. To the side is a textbox that reads When I was 12, I was a dorky, lonely kid, and some people took advantage of that. press b to move forward. A mouse hovers over the image of the person, and a smaller text box appears that reads Is this even still worth doing? Is it helping anybody? Is it helping me?

Exhibitions:

Upon completion of this 6-month-long thesis project, I presented my thoughts and research at UC Davis' Undergraduate Research Conference in spring of 2018. Additionally, in fall of 2019, I was invited to exhibit "Escort Yourself Out" as an official selection of the Student Game Showcase at the Dreamhack ATL games conference.

An image of an icon reading Dreamhack Atlanta 2019, Student Game Showcase Official Selection A photo of a laptop and some booklets set up at a convention, with lights from a stage and people visible in the background.
An animation of two adults standing in a space, facing off to the side. To the left of them is text that's partially cut-off. To the right is text reading You are a horrible person for even having these thoughts.

My favorite details of the project:

In the 7 years since I published "Escort Yourself Out," I've received a number of incredibly kind and heart-felt messages from players who connected with the game and felt seen by it. Hearing the thoughts of players who've found comfort in my work has been incredibly meaningful.