Porpentine Charity Heartscape (born 1987) is a

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the rules and content of video games in the Video game development#Pre-production, pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the Video game development ...

, new media artist, writer and curator based in

Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

. They are primarily a developer of

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

games and

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

mainly built using

Twine Twine is a strong Thread (yarn), thread, light String (structure), string or cord composed of string in which two or more thinner strands are twisted, and then twisted together (Plying, plied). The strands are plied in the opposite direction to ...

. They have been awarded a

Creative Capital Creative Capital is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in New York City that supports artists across the United States through funding, counsel, gatherings, and career development services. Since its founding in 1999, Creative Capital has co ...

grant, a Rhizome.org commission, the Prix Net Art, and a Sundance Institute's New Frontier Story Lab Fellowship. Their work was included in the 2017

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

. They were an editor for freeindiegam.es, a curated collection of free, independently produced games. They were a columnist for online PC gaming magazine '' Rock, Paper, Shotgun''.

Game design

Porpentine's 2012 Twine game ''Howling Dogs'' incorporates themes of escapism, violence and religious experience, though they have stated that it should be open to interpretation. They created ''Howling Dogs'' shortly after they started hormone-replacement therapy in 2012, in only seven days, while staying in a friend's remodeled barn. It won the 2012 XYZZY awards in the "Best story" and "Best writing" categories. The ''

Boston Phoenix ''The Phoenix'' (stylized as ''The Phœnix'') was the name of several alternative weekly periodicals published in the United States by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts, including the now defunct ''Boston Phoenix'', '' ...

'' listed it as one of their "Top 5 indie games of 2012". During the 2013

Game Developers Conference The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year, Game Developers Choice Awards and ...

, game designer Richard Hofmeier used the booth he had been given to showcase his own award-winning game '' Cart Life'' to showcase Porpentine's ''Howling Dogs'' instead. Hofmeier spray-painted the words "Howling Dogs" across the banner of his own booth, and showed Porpentine's game instead of his own. Hofmeier stated he wished to give greater exposure to Porpentine's game. In 2015 they released ''Eczema Angel Orifice'', a compilation of over 20 hypertext works from 2012 to 2015. The compilation includes critically acclaimed games such as '' With Those We Love Alive'', a queer fable about isolation, abuse, and the relationship between art and power; and ''Ultra Business Tycoon III'', a sprawling textual world disguised as edutainment software. In 2016,

Rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome ( ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and Shoot (botany), shoots from its Node (botany), nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from ...

commissioned Porpentine along with Neotenomie and Sloane through the series First Look: New Art Online resulting in ''Psycho Nymph Exile''. This work includes an online hypertext work, a booklet, and stickers. The project depicts the experience of PTSD as a visceral physical substance, not an invisible, abstract force. In 2022, Porpentine published their first full-length book ''Serious Weakness,'' a 625-page novel exploring themes of trauma, neurodivergence, and manipulation. The title is a translation of an autoimmune disease called ''

myasthenia gravis Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a long-term neuromuscular junction disease that leads to varying degrees of skeletal muscle weakness. The most commonly affected muscles are those of the eyes, face, and swallowing. It can result in double vision, ...

'', which causes weakness and fatigue within the skeletal and central nervous systems.

Selected works

* '' Howling Dogs'' (2012) * ''Their Angelical Understanding'' (2013) * ''Ultra Business Tycoon III'' (2013) * ''With Those We Love Alive'' (2014) * ''Everything You Swallow Will One Day Come Up Like A Stone'' (2014) * ''Neon Haze'' (2015) * ''Aria End'' (2015) * ''Psycho Nymph Exile'' (2016) * ''No World Dreamers: Sticky Zeitgeist'' (2017) * "The Decision So Many People Were Forced To Make Throughout History", ''Whose Future is It?'' (2018) (short story) * ''Serious Weakness'' (2022)

Awards

2012

* XYZZY Best Writing for ''Howling Dogs'' * "Golden Banana of Discord" for ''Howling Dogs'' at the 2012 Interactive Fiction Competition, a prize awarded for the highest standard deviation "both the most loved and the most hated."

2013

* XYZZY Best Writing for ''their angelical understanding'' * Indiecade Special Recognition for ''Porpentine's Twine Compilation'' * ''Porpentine's Twine Compilation'' listed by the

Museum of the Moving Image (New York City) The Museum of the Moving Image is a media museum located in a former building of the historic Astoria Studios (now Kaufman Astoria Studios), in the Astoria, Queens, Astoria neighborhood of Queens in New York City. The museum originally opened i ...

as one of "25 Must-Play Video Games".

2014

* XYZZY Best Writing and Best Individual NPC for ''With Those We Love Alive'' * Wordplay Festival Award for Most Unique World: ''With Those We Love Alive''

2016

Emerging Fields for ''Aria End'' (in collaboration with Peter Burr) * Otherwise Award Fellowship

2017

* Prix Net Art, in collaboration with

and Chronus Art Center *''With Those We Love Alive'' and ''howling dogs'' included in the

2018

* Sundance Institute New Frontier Lab Programs Fellow

References

External links

* *
Howling Dogs
' *
Vesp: A History of Sapphic Scaphism
'
Blog''Psycho Nymph Exile'' Secret Book
{{DEFAULTSORT:Porpentine Living people American video game designers Interactive fiction writers 1987 births American electronic literature writers American transgender writers American transgender artists LGBTQ video game developers LGBTQ designers