''Consentacle'' is a science fiction

cooperative board game Cooperative board games are board games in which players work together to achieve a common goal rather than competing against each other. Either the players win the game by reaching a predetermined objective, or all players lose the game, often by ...

about negotiating

consensual Consent occurs when one person voluntarily agrees to the proposal or desires of another. It is a term of common speech, with specific definitions used in such fields as the law, medicine, research, and sexual consent. Consent as understood in ...

sex between two

femme ''Femme'' (; , literally meaning ) is a term traditionally used to describe a lesbian woman who exhibits a feminine identity or gender presentation. While commonly viewed as a lesbian term, alternate meanings of the word also exist with some ...

characters: a human astronaut and a tentacled alien. It was designed by

Naomi Clark Naomi Clark may refer to: *Naomi Clark (90210 character) Naomi Clark, played by AnnaLynne McCord, is a fictional character from the The CW Television Network, CW primetime drama ''90210 (TV series), 90210'', the fourth series of the Beverly Hill ...

and illustrated by James Harvey. ''Consentacle'' was published in 2018 after a successful

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

campaign raised $154,609. The prototype for ''Consentacle'' won the Impact Award at

IndieCade IndieCade is an international juried festival of independent games. Game types include video games, live-action games, and tabletop games. Independent game developers are selected to demo, screen, and promote their work at the annual IndieCade fe ...

2015.

Themes

Clark, who is part Japanese, was inspired by the idea of

reclaiming In linguistics, reappropriation, reclamation, or resignification is the cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. It is a specific form of a semantic change (i. ...

hentai Hentai () is a style of Pornography in Japan, Japanese pornographic anime and manga. In addition to anime and manga, hentai works exist in a variety of media, including artwork and video games (commonly known as ''eroge''). The developme ...

to represent positive

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...

relationships. In a 2019 interview with Alex Meehan for ''Tabletop Gaming'', she explained, "I believed that the concept could be reclaimed and turned around; Consentacle is not what people expect from a game with tentacles in it."

Gameplay

''Consentacle'' is played silently and challenges players' nonverbal communication skills. Each player has a deck of cards. Players play cards in particular combinations to earn tokens representing trust and satisfaction. To earn satisfaction tokens, players must share their trust tokens.

Related Works

Following ''Consentacle'''s publication, Clark wrote the foreword to ''

Honey & Hot Wax ''Honey & Hot Wax'' is an anthology of artistic tabletop and live action role-playing games on the theme of sexuality, published by Pelgrane Press in 2020. It includes games by nine designers, a foreword by the academic chair of NYU Game Center, ...

'', a 2020 anthology of

live action role-playing games A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters.(Tychsen et al. 2006:255) "LARPs can be viewed as forming a distinct category of RPG because of two unique featur ...

on the theme of sex and sexuality.

References

{{reflist Board games introduced in 2018 Cooperative board games Erotic literature IndieCade winners Kickstarter-funded tabletop games LGBTQ-related tabletop games