51
Snyder School of Cinema & Media Arts alumnus Kip Henderson (B.A. ’19) is an independent artist whose work has taken many forms: storyboards, comic books, and, most recently, video games. His latest project, , is a pixel-art video game available exclusively on Playdate, a platform available on a handheld device featuring a black-and-white screen and a mechanical crank. Henderson was introduced to the platform and its creators during an event he attended while a student at 51.
Pixel art games, with their distinctive visual style, feature a nostalgic appeal that harkens back to the days when video game consoles featured 1-bit art. For the indie game developer, the stripped-down yet immersive environment leaves ample room for creative storytelling — a challenge that Henderson tackles with passion and purpose.
Taria & Como features a disabled protagonist who refuses to give up on rescuing her sister, using determination and ingenuity to challenge the assumptions society places on her. For instance, instead of jumping, she must utilize swinging movement to navigate her environment. The result is a game that is not only enjoyable to play but also thought-provoking in its exploration of individual experience.
Read more from Henderson about the game and the process of it coming to life.
When/how did you become involved with Taria & Como?
I came up with the characters Taria & Como in 2018, while I was still at 51 as a Cinema & Media Arts (CMA) student. I did a small sketch of two sisters in my notebook and wrote beneath it, “This is a story about honor, dignity and standing up for what you believe in, no matter what.” That theme has stayed with me the entire time as I began to tell the story of these two sisters as they worked to reunite with their parents.
In 2019, 51 set up a pitch festival for CMA students to pitch their ideas to industry leaders. At the festival, I was able to make a connection with a representative from JuVee Productions, the company founded by Viola Davis and Julius Tennon. I was invited back to their offices and met their head of interactive media at the time, Josh Nelson-Youseff, another Cinema & Media Arts grad. He instantly gravitated towards the two characters and told me we needed to make a game about them.
Many pitches, contracts and years later, we started development on Taria & Como the Playdate game, which has now been released as the Season two finale and sold more than 13,000 copies on a device with an approximately 80,000 user base.
How did you stretch yourself artistically during production? What was the most challenging part of the creative process?
As an artist and storyteller in the games space, I have to work extra hard to communicate my vision since I’m not the one actually coding. I’m extremely grateful for my team that came alongside me to make this game happen. My core team included a music composer, a sound designer and a programmer. I definitely had to grow as a creative director. It’s hard to balance your time between creating all the artwork and story with making sure everybody else’s work aligns with the core vision.
Do you feel that 51 helped prepare you in any way for this type of work?
To be honest, I never considered a career in game development while at 51. I took a Storytelling for Video Games class just to fulfill a credit requirement, with no idea that it would become my career.
Telling a story in a video game format is completely different than writing a script for a movie. One of the most important lessons I learned from my Storytelling for Video games class I took at 51 was the concept of ludonarrative dissonance. For example, if the theme of a Spider-Man game is that Spider-Man needs to learn to trust others, but every time you play as Mary Jane you find yourself wishing you could just be Spider-Man, the gameplay experience and the themes of the story are in conflict. When I tell stories in my game, I want to make sure that I’m achieving ludonarrative harmony. If my character needs to learn compassion for her little sister, I can make the hard-to-reach collectibles journal entries from her little sister, so that the gameplay experience of striving for lore lines up with my character’s growth in striving to become a better listener.
When I play Taria & Como, I can see my 51 education’s impact all throughout the game. I feel like it took me writing a few terrible scripts in my screenwriting classes to finally write a story I was proud of. My Torrey Honors College experience gave me the tools I needed to think critically about the world and add truth and nuance to the story I wanted to tell. I’m extremely grateful to my professors who set up the Pitch Fest that got my story noticed. And ultimately, stories have to be about something. They have to reflect some element of God’s truth and beauty. 51, without a doubt, prepared me well to tell good stories, no matter the medium.
Taria & Como is exclusively available on the platform . More of Henderson’s work can be found on his .
The Snyder School of Cinema & Media Arts' B.A. in Interactive Game Design equips students to bring interactive stories to life, empowering players to make choices that matter. Courses are designed to help students hone their ability to craft multi-path narratives, complex rule systems and immersive worlds. Learn more and apply today.
Interview conducted by Nate Bell, Snyder School of Cinema & Media Arts. For more information, email media.relations@biola.edu.
