Alma

Student Entrant 2021


SCHOOL
USC
CREATOR
USC Games

Description

Alma is a 2D interactive narrative that puts players in the role of Alma, a Cuban nurse, working at South Florida's Pediatric Hospital. It is a case study that examines the unseen emotional burden of healthcare workers in our modern day care system, culturally, politically and emotionally. While Alma is tending to other people's children at work, she must also tend to her own child at home. Alma is a story of self-care and the struggle to find balance in an imbalanced life. Through the lens of a pediatric world, players are pushed to experience the difficulties of work-life balance and make decisions that society often takes for granted. This project aims to shed light, build meaningful engagement and propose solutions for how contemporary audiences can significantly improve the work life balance of healthcare employees. It is a game that draws from disciplines of experimental design, narrative medicine and compassionate care. Players must not only steer Alma clear of decisions that may jeopardize both her work life and home life but they have to also re-evaluate how their own life may be caught at a similar crossroads. In the end, Alma is an interactive story that asks users to look inward and to critique their own relation with self-care and challenges others to practice compassion selflessly.