User:Wood.Iris

= Redshift & Portalmetal =

Overview
Redshift and Portalmetal, independently developed by cárdenas and released in 2015, is an online, interactive free-to-play video game that uses space travel as a lens through which to understand the process of migration and settlement through the story of a trans woman of colour, Roja, who has been forced to flee her home planet for the stars due to climate change. “Redshift” is a concept of astrology while “portalmetal” refers to the sci-fi concept of jewellery that connects wearers to their ancestors.

Gameplay
Using a choose-your-own-adventure narrative, meaning the player is presented with multiple choice moments in the form of hypertext selections throughout playing, the player’s decisions drive the narrative and the story’s progression traces the process of colonisation as Roja has to traverse the three planets she finds herself inhabiting and the space between them, while the player is placed in the shoes of Roja and the conflicting identities her character encompasses.

As the player moves from screen to screen they encounter various videos starring cárdenas performing the character of Roja accompanied by ambient sound and poetry accordingly as they navigate through the story. The beginning screen confronts the player with a vast red sky and the words “your planet is dying” as they must make the first decision to “Stay and Help”, “Go to the Ice Planet”, or “Go to the Ocean Moon”.

Planets
There are three planets that Roja finds to be her new home – the Ice Planet, the Planet with no Rain and the Ocean Moon.

The Ice Planet
The Ice Planet, a desolate expanse covered in snow and ice, is a place for hard, exploitative labor. The player sees images of factories and frozen landscapes accompanied by the ominous whirring and moaning of machinery that can be presumed to be the same machines that destroyed Roja’s home planet.

The Ocean Moon and the Planet with no Rain
The Planet with No Rain is a desert space where Roja seeks healers and healing, while the Ocean Moon is a place of leisure and distraction that acts as an escape from the distressing Planet with no Rain. Here Roja's written monologue states:"'I'm writing from the site of so many apocalypses [...] We no longer have the luxury of expression for representation into a coherent system, we now simply make choices for survival, our embodiments and expressions being distributed virally in ways we don't control and can't conceive, or sometimes, not distributed at all'."

Dedication
As detailed in the game's end screen, over 2014 and 2015 cárdenas was a visitor to the territories of the Anishnabe, Mississauga, New Credit and Grassy Narrows territories over the US and Canada, whom the game is dedicated to, as their people and homelands must face "the murdering and disappearance of native women, as well as mercury poisoning and logging and other destructive practices".

Development
The game is online and interactive, flowing from screen to screen of video recorded by cárdenas as a website due to its HTMLS video, CSS, JavaScript and hypertext composition.

cárdenas designed the game using the scholarly publishing platform Scalar, and “designed the interaction, wrote the text, performed the movement, and coordinated the filming in Los Angeles and Toronto”. In the game’s end screen she thanks game developers Samantha Gorman and Adam Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz for helping her “reconsider games as an important cultural form”. Further on the medium of video game, cárdenas states "If traditional media has been corrupted, then we must adapt and create/utilise technologies accessible outside of this".

The music by Bobby Bray carries the various moods of the game, from nervous and suspenseful to soothing and tranquil with the changes of setting.

Reception & Exhibitions
The game has been met with acclaim since release and has been exhibited and taught in various classes dealing with gender, electronic literature, digital humanities and environmental literature including The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3, and presented at the Mile End Art Pavilion in London at the Ecofutures Festival, in MOMA R&D at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the HTMlles Festival of New Media in Montreal, the YYZ Artist Run Space in Toronto, the SCA Gallery in Los Angeles, Temple Contemporary in Philadelphia, Artscape Gibraltar Point on the Toronto Islands, and at the Gender, Bodies, Technology Conference at Virginia Tech.