Sand and Paper
Sand and Paper is a text-based, cosmic-horror themed narrative game where you play as a private investigator recounting the story of his traumatic experience while investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl in the fictional town of Papyrus, Nevada. Along the way, you begin to learn that the girl, Johanna McDermot, may have been involved with forces beyond her ken.
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This story was born from my interest in the cosmic horror genre, as well as my conflicting emotions about the genre’s origins. Cosmic horror is directly linked to its creator, H.P. Lovecraft, who was a deeply racist figure even by the standards of the period in which he lived. As a result, while his writing is extremely evocative and compelling, it also has uncomfortable mentions of people of color as animalistic or lesser than the well-educated, clean-cut white men that were the protagonists of his stories.
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I knew that when I wrote a cosmic horror story, I wanted to ensure that the groups that Lovecraft had neglected in his writing were given a positive spotlight. I also wanted to expand on the genre, as much of cosmic horror is based around Lovecraft’s writing, which is based in his own personal fears, giving the alien horrors an aesthetic of slime and rot, and usually are set in seaside New England provinces, similar to the areas where Lovecraft grew up.
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Image sourced through Creative Commons
This line of thinking brought me to the core aesthetic of Sand and Paper: instead of having watery rot as the focus of the horror, I would focus on the horror of dry sterility - the desert. In searching for the setting of my story, I decided on Nevada, home to the Mojave Desert.
I settled on this location for two main reasons. First, the Mojave is large enough to have the characters in the story be suitably isolated while giving off a traditional dessert vibe, with a blazing sun and lots of sand, while also being close enough to civilization that their isolation wouldn’t be impossible due to a lack of resources.
Image sourced through Creative Commons
Image sourced through Creative Commons
My second reason for choosing the Mojave is due to its demographics. According to the US Census, about 30 percent of Nevada’s population are Hispanic or Latino. This fairly sizeable demographic meant a chance to naturally include minorities in the story, giving them the spotlight that the genre’s creator would not. I spent a great deal of time fleshing out Johanna McDermot, an intelligent, sensitive, and creative young woman, who also happens to be mixed race - her father is white, while her mother is Hispanic.
Usually in Lovecraft stories, the sensitive author or artist is a stand-in for Lovecraft himself, so I felt that putting a woman in this position was significant, especially since Johanna’s desires to be remembered for her writing and to be accepted for who she is are key to the overall story of Sand and Paper.
Credits
Written and Designed by Zach Ginsburg
Created using Twine