nilson carroll’s personal, liminal grocery game
The Queer Games Bundle is a collection of nearly 600 items by LGBTQ+ creators and teams, nearly 400 of which are independent video games, all sold for just $60. I’m talking with creators from the bundle about their games and their making habits. Visit the bundle and consider buying it.
nilson carroll (he/him) is one of the organizers of the Queer Games Bundle, and I’d been meaning to check out his recent game Whenever You Can Breathe. It’s a short RPG adventure set in and around a grocery store where the main character’s friends are working that day. I was really moved by the writing, which is personal and explores mental health, family acceptance, and more.
How long have you been making games?
I’ve been making games since forever, since I was a little kid and making up games and rituals. The first video game I ever made was probably in around 2003, when I used RPG Maker Super Dante for the Super Famicom — I made a game about how much I had a crush on Pete Wentz, lol.
What tools do you like to use?
RPG Maker primarily, but I also am a ROM hacker and zine maker. I try to use textures I find through photography, or field recording, when making games. I end up handwriting a lot of notes over the course of a game.
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
I usually end up using the framework of the RPG to explore issues around bodies, illness, and queerness. My games, even ones that don’t seem like it, are highly autobiographical, and sometimes function like diaries. I’m interested in working within the margins.
This is the only way I know how to make and more importantly, the only way I know how to tell the truth. I think I had to wade through a lot of lies I was telling myself about myself to get here.
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
Game making is incredibly free in that you can design sequences and bits of narrative, and change the lighting and music, add details and small dream logics, and players spend time with these design choices you make. That freedom can be overwhelming, too, though, about knowing when to stop, and knowing when to edit. There can also be technical issues, but I try to make games as simple as possible.
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
I played a game today where the artist used their body to create textures and objects. My relationship to my own body is central to how I make games, and I thought this was a really useful exercise in dealing with one’s own body. I think a lot about Ana Mendieta when I make and play games. I went to the magic store the other day with my friend who needed some spells, I want to play a video game that reaches into the arcane, that moves beyond the veil that a lot of games are obsessed with.
Whenever You Can Breathe is a very personal game. How did you decide what to reveal and what to invent?
I’m not sure there are made-up things in that game. The further I got into development, the more feeling-based my making became. Everything in there is intentional and emotion-driven, my emotions drove my making (this can be difficult). Why can’t you see the player character behind some of the grocery store shelves? Why is it that sometimes there are two audio tracks playing at once? There are a lot of strange choices. This game was many games before it was released.
In terms of revealings, I don’t have much to hide. This is the only way I know how to make and more importantly, the only way I know how to tell the truth. I think I had to wade through a lot of lies I was telling myself about myself to get here.
It’s probably absurd, but I guess I’m confident in some way about style — I usually pick something once and stick with it. I find myself at my computer at night going “oh, that is fabulous” to no one.
What led you to set the game in a grocery store? That’s such a nice liminal space.
The grocery store is huge, and totally outside the player character. They can remain completely immobile, but the store continues on. Shoppers come and go, and the player character’s friends are on set paths due to their occupations. Yeah, it’s completely liminal, and lets the player character step outside into the margins a bit, and, hopefully, take a breath.
This is very true to my experience, as a huge fan of the 24 hour grocery store (rest in peace, post-COVID) — you can momentarily slip out of your reality, no intentions of buying things, just walking, looking at labels. It’s loud, it’s alive, and you can blend in, get away. Your time stops if you can move around aimlessly, even for a bit.
I really like the art in this game. What influenced that noisy colorful style?
I’m a big glitch-user, as well as a video texture-phile. Some of the sprites were generated by algorithms fed with 100s of spritesheets. A lot of the textures were made through glitch techniques, and things I had collected over the years. It’s probably absurd, but I guess I’m confident in some way about style — I usually pick something once and stick with it. I find myself at my computer at night going “oh, that is fabulous” to no one. I like to make things fast. I try to go as fast as my brain and heart go, but that’s obviously impossible.
You’ve studied art in school — how does that affect your work in games?
I’m a poet and an artist before I am a “game developer,” and this is how I make games. I didn’t fit in extremely well within those spaces, either, but I’m figuring things out for myself… when I studied writing, for instance, I didn’t care so much for the “plot,” but more about the instance of standing on a street at night looking at all the different color temperatures of light that make each porch glow… the instance of being in a well-lit front room and moving into the dimly-lit back room.
Light, sequence, and texture end up being more important than plot. This becomes more complex when we start thinking about game mechanics. New opportunities arise. I don’t think many folks believed me then and maybe they don’t now too, haha, but these are the things that I am informed by. That, and my own autobiography. I’m most interested in things that are vulnerable, that create vulnerable space for the maker and the player.
What do you hope people take away from Whenever You Can Breathe?
I made this game within the span of a period of illness. I was ill when I made it, and I’m probably not going to fully recover ever (or at least it currently feels this way). I didn’t necessarily make the game to be “heard” or “seen,” but maybe I made it to be “believed.” I do want to create space that both the maker (me) and the player (you) can be vulnerable. I kept things slightly open-ended so that players could relate to certain parts, or let themselves be taken somewhere. Folks who play seem to have different elements that resonate with them.
I would say to someone playing this game “thank you for playing,” “I hope it resonates with you,” maybe even “I love you,” or, on rare occasions, “I love you, too.”
