Meryl Jocktane

“Dundas Street” is my final project that I’ve been working on since the last semester. I decided to step outside I my comfort zone, which is usually animation, and to venture myself creating a video game. The idea came from realizing that most of my recent animation borrowed from video game aesthetics, so I decided to one step forward by adopting another video game element : Interactivity.

Most of works try to explore the nostalgia of old arcade game but  the narratives are changed bu weaving in my own personal background.

The game “Dundas Street” takes place in Toronto and try to resume my life living in Chinatown for 5 years. The gameplay is simple yet I tried to convey my experience living there through my artworks; Chinatown is always busy and really packed making it hard to walk on. It is crowded place with a lot of signs and people walking on the narrow sidewalk with different pace making difficult to move yourself around while avoiding many obstacles. To add to the story line and to go back to the matter of representation, the main character is a black woman, who might or not be a representation of myself, having this black character into an Asian contrast was a way for me to impose my/a blackness into a décor that usually wouldn’t. Having a black character in a pixel old school game was a way to re appropriate this platform and with my own story.