Dujanah is the latest ludic endeavor from one of my favorite indie game makers, Jack Spinoza (AKA Jack King-Spooner). His games have covered a lot of territory, from the grotesque afterlife of Will You Ever Return?, to the Hindu Wild West of Blues for Mittavinda, to the twisted posthuman future of Sluggish Morss, to the magical realist Scottland of Beeswing.
Once again, he treads new ground. Dujanah is set in the near future of an alternate reality version of our world, in a fictional Islamic country that is living under the heel of a non-Muslim military occupation. You play the title role, a Muslim woman who fights back. Notably, she fights back using a giant mech. She also faces sticky moral quandaries and plays a number of arcade games, among other things. Despite the violent-sounding plot, the game is more interested in setting, character, and dialogue than in action—except in the arcade, of course.
Everything in the game that you see and hear is made from scratch, by hand or digitally—or both—by Jack. He also crafted all of the dialogue and the subversive, non-linear narrative. Some plot elements, like Dujanah’s personal motivations, are randomized for each playthrough; other things are determined by your own choices or actions.
Some things even depend on your performance in the arcade, which contains several (probably 5) fully playable games within the game. These are an opportunity for the developer to have fun with some different styles of gameplay than he usually employs, and they give the player welcome respite from the strife-ridden world outside of the arcade’s snug walls. Just like an arcade in real life!
I am a backer of the Dujanah Kickstarter, and you can be, too.
Here, listen to the man himself pitch you the project in his own mellifluous brogue:
Next: I ask Jack King-Spooner some questions…and he answers them!
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