Windows Messenger - Game Boxes

Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee — key art for "The Girl Who Refused the Moon", a side-scrolling Irish folklore narrative adventure

The Girl Who Refused the Moon

Role: creator, game designer, narrative systems

Format: side-scrolling narrative adventure

Setting: a half-real Irish coastal town where the tide has stopped moving

A quiet game about a girl who leaves a party before sunrise and find that the whole coastline has shifted. The player controls Nell, who has to move through beaches, cliffs, closed pubs, old churches, caravan parks and flooded roads while trying to bring her friends home.

The gameplay is built around moon phases and social promises. Certain paths only appear when Nell keeps or breaks promises made to other characters. If she lies, the moon pulls the tide in. If she tells the truth, the landscape opens, but other characters remember what she said.

There is no combat. The player solves environmental puzzles by moving objects, lighting signal fires, listening to old songs, following bird patterns, and choosing when to speak or stay quiet.

Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee — key art for "Offering Table", an atmospheric Bali-set ritual puzzle game

Offering Table

Role: game designer, writer, ritual mechanics

Format: atmospheric puzzle game

Setting: Bali, inside a village where offerings have started appearing in the wrong places

The player is a young woman helping her aunt prepare daily offerings while strange things begin happening around the village. A shrine moves overnight. A dog refuses to cross a road. A tourist villa keeps losing its doors.

Gameplay centres on ritual placement. Players collect flowers, rice, thread, coins, leaves, incense, fruit and small personal objects, then arrange them in different combinations.

The system is gentle but exact. Time of day matters. Direction matters. Who gave you the object matters. A plastic lighter from a beach party does not behave like a family ring.

Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee — key art for "Night Market Oracle", a narrative trading game set between Thailand and dream logic

Night Market Oracle

Role: creator, systems designer, interactive writer

Format: narrative exploration and trading game

Setting: a night market somewhere between Thailand, dream logic and the afterlife

The player arrives at a night market with no money, no phone and a bag full of objects she does not remember collecting. To leave, she has to trade with vendors who sell impossible things.

Gameplay is based on story-economy trading. Objects do not have fixed prices. Their value changes depending on who wants them, what rumour is moving through the market, and what the player has already given away.

The main play is negotiation, memory and consequence. Players can bargain, flatter, lie, confess, perform small tasks, or walk away.

Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee — key art for "Bog Body Disco", a short cinematic Irish festival-set adventure

Bog Body Disco

Role: game designer, narrative lead, prototype developer

Format: short cinematic adventure

Setting: rural Ireland, after a music festival beside an ancient bog

A strange, sad-funny game about a girl who wakes up after a festival and finds that everyone has gone home except her, one lost DJ, and something very old speaking from under the bog.

The player moves through tents, abandoned stages, wet fields, generator lights, food vans and ancient burial ground. The gameplay mixes sound puzzles, memory fragments and movement through unstable ground.

The central mechanic is sinking and resurfacing. The player can go down into the bog-world to recover memories, but staying too long changes the surface world.

Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee — key art for "House of Small Gods", a companion-based puzzle adventure set in northern Thailand

House of Small Gods

Role: co-designer, systems writer, folklore consultant

Format: companion-based puzzle adventure

Setting: an old guesthouse in northern Thailand where every room belongs to a different household spirit

The player takes the role of Mara, an Irish game developer staying in a cheap guesthouse while trying to finish a project. At night, the building rearranges itself and small spirits begin asking for help.

The main gameplay is built around a companion system. Mara travels with a tiny house spirit who is vain, helpful, jealous and easily offended.

Puzzles involve fixing domestic problems that are also mythic problems: returning a borrowed name, feeding a photograph, repairing a staircase that forgot where it leads, and calming rooms full of secrets.