Final Game Sketch: Club Baths

Club Baths is a walking simulator set in a gay bathhouse. The title is a reference to one of the four gay bathhouses that were raided by the Toronto Metropolitan Police in 1981. When the game starts, you find out that you’re a researcher who’s doing work in the office and the owner calls you to propose that you take the night off and explore the bathhouse instead. At this point, any choices you make will still result in the owner directing you to where the keys to the door is located and it is up to you whether to take up his offer. There are certain things in the office that you can interact with, such as a Grecian statue, some documents lying on the floor and on the shelves and some books. Once you are ready, you can find the key and open the door to the bathhouse. As you walk through the hallways, you find other statues and things you can interact with scattered throughout the space. Most of the statues are snippets of poetry There isn’t a clear structure or linear narrative and you are free to wander and discover all the pieces of the puzzle on your own. Once you have interacted with most of the things in the space, you will be able to solve the last puzzle, which is big piece of marble that, once you’ve selected all the correct answers, opens up to a waterfall which leads you to a black room, and the music changes once you enter the room.

Game Sketch Iteration

For the game I am making for my Digital Games class, I am taking references from personal experiences and historical events and using queer theory and performance theory to think through my design challenges.

In 2001, a gang of men with baseball balls and a pool cue killed Aaron Webster in an area of Stanely Park in Vancouver frequented by gay men. Since then, numerous mysterious deaths and missing persons have occurred in Stanely Park. Most recently an international student went missing and was last seen around the Stanley Park's side of the Lion's Gate Bridge. I am not claiming that these are all people who went to Stanley Park for cruising, but I am interested in the park as a site because its beauty and popularity exists in parallel with its seedier underbelly.