Your birthright is a life-changing adventure to climb a shapeshifting castle, ascend the throne, and harness its power.

Your fate is intertwined with the sentient castle, and as it begins to fall apart, you must stop at nothing to reach the top of the tallest tower, where the mysterious key to your mutual survival awaits.

The climb upwards is gated behind the dimensional doors of the castle, which transport you to the surreal worlds outside - places and times which you could never have predicted you would visit.

For both of you to survive, you cannot go back, only forward.

Your journey will have you thinking deeply and answering your own questions about the fundamental nature of existence.

Feel the joys and fears, the loves and losses, the intensity and the quiet moments that arise from the evolving bond between your body and the castle as you climb.

As you climb every stair and overcome every obstacle, the tower changes, and so do you.
As the perils of your climb grow, your body will transform to survive.

Helped (and hindered) by the spirits who call this castle home, you will make heroic friends and foes, including the inscrutable tower itself. Explore the depth of your shared bond with the help of your guides and guardians.

Even as you adapt to your challenges and become more resilient, your body becomes less like the source of your resilience, and more like your personal cage.

As your path to the top becomes ever darker and more stifled, your castle becomes less like a prize to be won, and more like a prison closing around you.

Are you the author of your fate?

What is life, and what is death?

Are you more than the sum of your parts?

Does your past self persist within you, or is it cast off forever?

Where is the beginning and ending between you, and the perception of you in the minds of others?

Who remains, if anyone, when you adapt so completely that no original parts remain?

Decide the answers for yourself in…

I Am This Castle

This story-driven adventure game is a unique and heartfelt story about growing up – it is about the limitations others impose on us, and those we impose on ourselves. It is about identity, belonging, self-acceptance, and transcending boundaries.

This story is inspired by my life experiences as a transgender woman, and I am making it to increase the representation of trans stories in videogames. This game will be enjoyed by anyone who loves a strong story.

Please read on about the vision, purpose and rationale for this game.

Genre, platform, engine:

Single-player story-driven adventure for PC, developed in Unreal Engine 5.

Intended audience / classification:

This game will interest those who love story-driven adventures and emotional interactive experiences. The target audience is young adults and older, with a classification rating that will not exceed M for Mature (classification has not been sought).

Intended tags:

Single-player, story-rich, story-driven, LGBTQIA+, adventure, indie, exploration, atmospheric, short, narrative, interactive fiction, emotional, mystery, puzzle, great soundtrack.

Potential localisations:

Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Traditional Chinese.

Artificial Intelligence statement

This web page is a pre-prototype game pitch, and contains images created with artificial intelligence to capture your imagination. My use of AI imagery is to maximise the probability of succeeding in obtaining competitive grant funding to create paid opportunities for the visual artists on my creative team, who you can read about here.

This notice is my public commitment that if this game pitch is successfully funded through a competitive grant process, visual artists will be paid to create the game assets, and I commit to the use of AI being confined to this unfunded, pre-prototype pitch - all artists should be paid fairly for their work, and not lose their creative opportunities as a result of AI.

These images have been licenced through Adobe Stock. If you wish to read about the creative provenance of AI images available on Adobe Stock, that information is available here.

Embark on a heartfelt journey