Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is something that is often misinterpreted in media and pop culture and misunderstood by the public at large. In their immersive and poignant graphic novel She Could Fly from Dark Horse Comics and Berger Books, writer Christopher Cantwell, artist Martín Morazzo, and colorist Miroslav Mrva used their tale to give readers a better understanding of OCD within the framework of a story that is painted with hope.
Wowbagger Productions Founder Sara Kenney wants to spread that message to another platform and multimedia experience. Just last week, Kenney and Wowbagger released the She Could Fly documentary game on STEAM, inspired by the graphic novel and with its own main character managing her OCD. All profits from the game will go toward engagement activities toward mental health, game development, and game upkeep.
I spoke with Sara Kenney recently about the She Could Fly documentary game, the graphic novel source material, crafting the game’s multimedia experience, and how she hopes the project will bring awareness and understanding of OCD.
FreakSugar: Before we talk about the game adaptation of She Could Fly, how did you become involved with the project?
Sara Kenney: I was the idiot who came up with the idea and thought it was feasible to make a game with a 20k grant! Luckily when I pitched the idea to Karen Berger (who I worked with on Surgeon X comic), she understood what we were trying to do and trusted us to deliver!
A load of other creatives (and luckily funders) liked the idea too and have joined us on the 2-year journey. We managed to increase the budget and built a team of game and comic creatives, scientists, medical humanities experts and lived experience to build what can only be called a bit of an experiment.
It’s a game featuring a comic, but with documentary elements too. And it has an awesome soundtrack by Toya Delazy, inventor of AfroRave and Zulu Princess. Come on, that’s gotta be worth five bucks?
FS: For folks not familiar with the story, what can you tell us about She Could Fly?
SK: She Could Fly is a groundbreaking comic from the co-creator of AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire Christopher Cantwell, acclaimed Ice Cream Man artist Martín Morazzo and colorist Miroslav Mrva (Deadpool). It tells the story of 15-year-old Luna, who becomes obsessed with a flying lady.
Luna lives with OCD and we see extraordinary visualizations of brutal intrusive thoughts that plague her on a daily basis. When she gets these thoughts, she has to enact compulsions to alleviate the stress and to stop the bad things from happening.
The game is not set in the comic storyworld, but that of a fledgling comic creator who is a massive fan of She Could Fly. We enter her world and get to experience some of the comic, through the game.
FS: The game sounds like a true multimedia experience. What can you tell us about gameplay? What kinds of avenues did you consider when deciding what you wanted gameplay to look like?
SK: The gameplay I developed with Mink Ette (Oubliette Escapes/ Preloaded) and it’s evolved from several ‘in-person’ events that we’ve run at Thought Bubble Comic Con in Yorkshire, UK since 2017. It’s an escape game format in that you enter a space and have to solve puzzles to escape. But in our live events we always had the element of engaging with an expert to explore a theme around science or health and people loved this.
We hoped that we could translate this digitally and spent a lot of time thinking about the grammar of the game and the gear change from game to comic, documentary and back to game. Getting the narrative of those elements to flow in a meaningful way took a lot of thought/ development/ re-writing.
In this game you enter the flat of Hana. But you’re accompanied by a narrator, Tiger Orchid who is a Twitch/YouTube style gamer. As you journey you find ripped up pieces of the comic and you have to put them together on a plinth. Once pieced together you get to read a couple pages of the comic, and embedded in the pages are links to the documentary films.
By watching the films you get clues to escaping that loop. We wanted the flat to feel quite warm and friendly because the subject matter is so dark. But you’ll have to play to see if it stays that way. We have a few surprises and the flat gets re-decorated a few times from a disco to a 90s arcade.
FS: You’ve addressed public health concerns in your work in the past with comics like Surgeon X. What is it about the topic of and issues surrounding OCD that made you want to examine them with She Could Fly?
SK: On a personal level we have a lot of neurodiversity in our family. Not specifically OCD, but mental health themes are a territory I’m interested in. When I read She Could Fly it was obvious it was created by people who understood the illness.
For all our projects the creation of the art or story is the tip of the iceberg. We always have a participatory arts element and policy impact or health/ science change piece we want to work on. OCD is the mental illness that takes the longest to diagnose (average of 7-years in the UK). Unlike other mental illnesses it can manifest in quite early childhood. A lot of people talk about OCD thoughts from the age of 7 or 8. But it is very treatable for many people.
So it felt like a space where we could create impact and destroy some of the myths. The more people recognise and understand the illness and if we can reduce the trivialisation of OCD – this will lead to better outcomes.
FS: What do you hope that players take away from the experience of the game?
SK: Ultimately we want people to feel like they have a better understanding of what OCD is (and isn’t). It’s not about cleaning and organising things in neat piles. OCD plagues sufferers with distressing intrusive thoughts and exhausting compulsions. We all get intrusive thoughts so lots of people will relate to these but the thing that marks the difference is feeling the need to perform compulsions in response to the thoughts. By playing this game and journeying with characters Tiger and Hana, we hope people develop a bit more empathy and understanding for those who live with OCD.
It’s also a short game at about 90-minutes. I read a bit of research that only 14% of players on STEAM completed the games they own. So if you haven’t got a great attention span, this could be the game for you, because you might just get to the end. We’re also very cheap!
She Could Fly is now available on STEAM.
From the official press release for the documentary game:
She Could Fly — the groundbreaking graphic novel from the co-creator of AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire Christopher Cantwell, acclaimed Ice Cream Man artist Martín Morazzo and colorist Miroslav Mrva (Deadpool) — is a one-of-a-kind reading experience. And now the experimental graphic novel from Dark Horse Comics and Berger Books will be a documentary escape game designed to challenge how we think about the deeply misunderstood mental illness, OCD.
Combining comic art, documentary films and interactive gameplay, the She Could Fly Documentary Escape Game is a point and click, psychological game from Wowbagger Productions that takes players on a looping adventure to explore OCD.
“For me, in the graphic novel, flying is a form of relief or freedom for the main characters,” said Christopher Cantwell. “In my life, what I look for, in terms of relief or freedom, is not happiness but peace of mind. Real peace of mind. Peace of mind is very important to me, and it’s something I’m always striving for. And I hope that by playing this game or reading our story, it helps you find some peace of mind as well.”
The not-for-profit game will be published on gaming platform STEAM on July 12 2024 and will be available for £4.99/ $5.99, with all proceeds beyond development costs going to further engagement activities around OCD and mental health along with upkeep of the game. Fans can ‘wishlist’ the game here.
The game features gorgeous artwork by Martín Morazzo and Miroslav Mrva from the She Could Fly graphic novel. The comic’s protagonist Luna lives with OCD and is trying to find a flying lady, whilst managing her debilitating OCD. The game’s guide and narrator is Tiger Orchid – a Twitch/ YouTube style narrator, who is played by actor Shaniqua Okwok (The Flatshare). Gamers will also meet Hanna Rampersad (34) who lives in the flat, the reassuring beanbag and creepy Fear Monsters.
“It’s so important for people who have lived experience of OCD and other mental health issues to read a story about somebody like themselves, to see what their experiences are, how they navigate that, and how they get through that,” said Karen Berger, Editor of Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. “This inventive and informative escape game beautifully captures the emotional power of the comic which has resonated with so many readers.”
“The work we do at Wowbagger Productions is very much about collaborating with creatives from marginalised perspectives to share less-known stories,” said Wowbagger Productions founder Sara Kenney, who wrote, directed and produced the game. “This is our first digital game and decades of storytelling and producing experience meant we ensured the comic, documentary and gameplay works together and flows in a meaningful way. Games for impact are an arena that the team at Wowbagger Productions are passionate about and want to continue our work, not just combining art and science, but also the different disciplines of games, comics and film.”
Sara Kenney, led and co-designed the game with co-producer Mairéad Ruane, who has lived experience of OCD. They worked with a team of ‘Lived Experience’ experts to inform the content and create a global engagement campaign to shift how we think about OCD and mental health. Scientists, psychologists and medical humanities experts from Bath University, Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital, Oxford University, Cambridge University, OCD Action and University of Southern Mississippi were part of the iterative design process, checking and commenting on scripts and game drafts for over 2-years.
The team collaborated with some incredible game veterans including Mink Ette, Chance Millar, David Mitchell, Lead Game Artist, Kiana Firouz and Sound Designer, Dan Pugsley. The team also included first time Art Director, Kiki Shervington and game music composer, musician and founder of AfroRave, Toya Delazy. The She Could Fly Documentary Escape Game is produced by Wowbagger Productions in association with Two Tails Studios & Oubliette Games, with funding from the Academy of Medical Sciences, Arts Council England, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The Physiological Society & UK Games Fund.
Leading UK OCD charity, OCD Action, explains ‘OCD is a serious mental health condition with debilitating effects, driven by distressing intrusive thoughts and exhausting compulsions. Current estimates suggest that a staggering 1-2% of the UK population lives with OCD, or approximately 670,000 to 1.3 million individuals. Yet, this number could still underrepresent the true scale of the condition, as the lack of understanding around OCD causes many to suffer in silence’ (OCD Action). Part of what we want to accomplish through the release of the game is to recognize people with OCD and guarantee them timely access to clinically recommended treatments.
Wowbagger Productions is calling on people to sign OCD Action’s open letter.
“She Could Fly is an ambitious and brilliant graphic novel and our goal for the She Could Fly Documentary Escape Game is to explore the world that Christopher Cantwell and Martín Morazzo created putting an end to trivialization of OCD, while increasing a real and empathetic understanding of the condition,” said Wowbagger Productions’ Sara Kenney.
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