Portfolio
The Book Ritualh
EGX
Leftfield Collection 2018
Nominee
Alt-Ctrl GDC Award 2019
Nominee - Most Creative Game
PLAY18
Honourable Mention
A MAZE Berlin 2019
Selected Press
It felt good to litter those pages and pages and pages with color and life and pain... Playing the game was emotionally draining, but also left me refreshed and filled with hope.
The Heartache Of A Video Game That Makes You Shred Real Books
Aiden Strawhun - Kotaku - 15 April 2019
The Book Ritual is one hell of an emotional rollercoaster, but the grief I carry around with me everyday gets smaller because the game helped me confront it.
This game destroys real books to help players cope with grief
Joanna Nelius - PC Gamer, 6 May 2019
What is the Book Ritual?
An interactive art-piece played using a real-world book of your choice.
Write in your book to tell it about yourself. Deface its pages in creativity exercises, so that your book can understand you. Tear out pages to keep the conversation going, as it reveals to you how it came to be and why it wants to know you.
The Book Ritual is about dealing with loss and accepting grief. The process of tearing up a book allows players to live out the experience of loss and examine the emotions that arise.
How to play
The game can be downloaded at home for free, and played using a standard office shredder.
At exhibitions, a specially modified shredder is provided. Inside is a sensor that detects when paper is being shredded.
The exhibition experience
Over the course of an exhibition the books will become filled with different players' messages, and other secret messages become anonymous shreds on the floor.
The pile of shreds that grows during an exhibition is a reflection of the emotional journey taken by previous participants. It mirrors the footprints left behind by those no longer with us.
