A spooky, 4-session mini-campaign set in the Faewild, perfect for Halloween.
Bubbles in My Head (Global Game Jam)
Year
October 2024
Role
Game Master, Game Writer
The story behind this piece
Bubbles in my head is an FMV, branching narrative game made in less than 48 hours, as part of the 2025 Global Game Jam (GGJ). I took on the roles of narrative designer in the storyboarding team, producer and co-director on the day of shooting, and video editor, and sound designer. Across these roles, I enjoyed maintaining and forwarding the narrative vision we had set out to create; giving input, direction, and design implementation to create as multi-layered a story as we could in the timeframe. The theme set this year was “Bubble”, so Bubbles in my Head was a working title, which the team grew attached to and stuck (though it is silly). You play as Isabel, a young woman in a time of crisis in her life, soaking in a bubble bath while reflecting on her rather troubled love life.
A surreal, camp and aesthetically pleasing game with a few surprises along the way, the player engages by clicking through dialogue options to unlock new narrative pathways, aiming to navigate imaginary conversations with their loved ones. We made Bubbles in Gadot, using live-action footage as its primary assets, and royalty-free b-reel footage, sounds, and music to fill the gaps. All dialogue was completely improvised by the actors on the spot after some simple direction on our part. I’m very proud of what we managed to accomplish artistically, technically and narratively. We set out to deliver an ambitious idea; to create a complete, simple branching-narrative FMV game within 48-hours, and actually managed to achieve it under very tight time and resource constraints. You can play Bubbles in my Head for free on Mac and Windows PC by downloading it from GGJ’s archive.
PSA: as a first playable the code is not optimised, and the video files are large, so it may cause some models to run hot. If you encounter a bug such as a lengthy black screen, or wish to skip forward dialogue, press the enter key.
