Samuel Baidoo and the REVEAL Game Studio team have announced the release of the autobiographical adventure game Plum Road Tea Dream on PC.
The game is available now on the Steam Page for $9.99 with a limited 15% launch discount.
To learn more, here is the overview and trailer as provided by the developer.
Overview:
Plum Road Tea Dream tells the semi-autobiographical story of 'S', a young game designer who creates virtual spaces that reflect their own introspective journey.
As you delve into 'S's life, you discover the complexity of pain, joy, grief, celebration, self-actualisation and the need for new rituals. Plum Road Tea Dream invites you to slow down. Awakening in you the urge to confront your own thoughts, to question and to feel. Deeply.
Plum Road Tea Dream is a multiformat project by artist Samuel Baidoo (they/them) and collaborators, that takes on various shapes: a video game, performance and exhibition. Reflecting on their experience as a queer person of color, Baidoo transforms their pain, joy and grief into game lore. They created the avatar ‘S’ whose memories and safe havens you may visit. Each space becomes a sanctuary, where visitors and players are invited to slow down and wander. Exploring means diving deeper into S’s psyche. Wandering and encountering becomes an archeological process of grief, healing and gaming.
Levels, graphic styles and tones shift as one explores deeper into this world, and in the process, ourselves.
Plum Road Tea Dream evolves the videogame and its association to violence and imperialism to reappropriate its form and center its experience on connection, introspection, and healing. It uses the video game as a way to connect the individual and the societal.
Features:Who is Samuel?
- A profound story which delves into the pain & joy of S.’s life as a queer person of color
- A futuristic machine to create animistic gods.
- A quest to manifest the Sword of Sadness and shape its myth
- The need to find rest, sanctuary and comfort
- Based on autobiographical experiences, and real-world events
- Inspires real-world reflection on topics such as grief, identity, crying, human touch and rituals.
Samuel Baidoo (they/them) is a creator, performer and mentor. Throughout their individual journey, they weave autobiographical experiences into a wide range of art forms. Baidoo’s work invariably begins with the intuitive creation of a new archive filled with images, snippets of text, film stills, documentaries, pieces of music or excerpts from series, films, games or manga. Sharing this archive continually reveals new content with which they continue to work. In this way, they associate and connect with the world around them.
Baidoo works from their own studio, but also creates commissioned productions and is one of the artistic directors of the Hanafubuki artists’ collective. In recent years, they have collaborated with Agostina D’Alessandro, Tuur Marinus, tout petit, Michiel Vandevelde and Nikima Jagudajev, amongst others. In addition, Baidoo mentors dance students at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp every year.
Background info
Plum Road Tea Dream is a highly collaborative project featuring the work of 6 game developers, 11 traditional and new-media artists, and 4 composers. Contributions from the various collaborators range in size from a few assets for a specific environment to the game's start screen or an entire level. The result is an eclectic yet coherent, dreamlike art style. Different chapters evoke entirely different atmospheres and aesthetics, creating an immersive and compelling journey.
The team behind Plum Road Tea Dream is highly diverse in terms of ethnicity, sexuality, age, skills, expertise and gender. The project’s key roles are taken by Samuel and Fran, who both identify as non-binary or genderfluid. Women (cis and trans) and non-binary people are represented throughout all areas of the project and make up almost three-quarters of the team. The world of Plum Road Tea Dream has largely been created by queer people and people of color.
Unique to this collaboration is the constant exchange between analogue arts and virtual implementation. Clay sculptures and handcrafted objects were 3D scanned, while sketches and maquettes were translated into the virtual world. Real life and videogame gradually began to blend. In that sense, the creative process echoes the game's autobiographical and gamified content.
The many voices of the collaborators have seeped into the work through shared stories, perspectives, and an eclectic approach to worldbuilding, allowing Plum Road Tea Dream to be read as a multivocal, queer, Afro-futurist work of art.
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