by Zuzana Fryntová
We are delighted to launch a new interactive videogame co-designed by Alchemy Film & Arts and Borders Additional Needs Group (BANG) exploring participants’ lived experience of neurodiversity. Arcade Machine is the latest outcome of a partnership first initiated in 2020. A collaboration with Branching Out, BANG’s transitional programme for 16-25-year-olds living with an additional need, the project is part of Film Town, Alchemy’s year-round programme of community filmmaking, skills development and creative learning.
Arcade Machine is two things: a portable unit inspired by old gaming arcades, and a playable videogame titled To the City: A Neurodivergent Adventure. Both were co-designed by participants with guidance from the Alchemy team. Through regular workshops, participants wrote the game’s story based on their own experiences, such as catching a bus and going to the shops, imagining the different ways in which resulting scenarios could play out. Participants collaborated on all aspects of the in-game universe, including character and backdrop design, animated character loops, audio and dialogue. In addition, they decorated the machine itself.
Unfolding as an RPG, To the City takes users through a series of decisions over five levels, from their in-game character’s home to the cultural venue at which they are due to meet family. Initial decisions include whether to take an umbrella, whether to take a comforter with them and whether to watch television prior to leaving home to catch the bus.
As the implications and ripple effects of these decisions play out, in-game anxiety levels indicated by lights on the machine itself begin to increase. So too, perhaps, will those of the person playing the game! In this sense, Arcade Machine demonstrates what an ostensibly simple event such as catching public transport can mean for a person living with neurodiversity. The game also to this end functions as an expression of life in the Scottish Borders, placing our region at the centre of conversations around human rights, the social model of disability and public infrastructure.
