All Animals Under Heaven

I wrote this game for the Cyberpunk for Asian Creators Game Jam. It's drawing on different aspects of my culture (Chinese culture; specifically disapora Chinese) for character creation and also prompting the narrative created by players. Two moments of inspiration come to mind.

Firstly I'm somewhat ambivalent about the Chinese zodiac. There's a personal anecdote that comes to mind for me. When I was very young (so young I don't remember this story; my mother had to tell me about it later), my mother let a door-to-door salesman into the house. He was trying to make small talk, and he saw me in the room. He asked my mother if I was a Tiger baby. She replied I was a Rabbit. He said that was good, because otherwise as a Tiger, I would be fierce as a woman.

My mother didn't like this at all. My parents were fairly progressive in some ways raising us, and she didn't want my head filled with nonsense about how it's bad to be fierce if you're woman, how you should be retiring or demure instead. She chased the door-to-door salesman out of the house with a broom!

So yes, I have some ambivalence about the ways the Chinese Zodiac can be used. On the other hand, I love animals. When I left the family home to study abroad, one item I took with me is a charm bracelet that has all the animals of the Chinese Zodiac on it. I love the richness of all the different animals. And I like the idea that you come full circle when you reach age 60, because you've gone through cycles of 12 (the animal signs) and 5 (the 5 elements) to reach the same state you were in when you were born (the same animal sign, the same element.) There's something in that which allows for a more positive view of aging than you'll sometimes find in Western culture. In Heaven, the megacity I'm writing about, one thing I do specify is that people can routinely live up to 120 years (so doubling the return at age 60.)

As for the almanac, when I was thinking about writing this game my grandmother died. She was my last remaining grandparent. I thought about the times my cousins and I spent in our grandparents' homes. I remembered how there would often be a Chinese calendar on the wall, with a tear off sheet for each day and information from the Almanac about what was auspicious or inauspicious for each day. Since that was on my mind, I incoporated it into the game. As with the zodiac, I chose to simply the sheer amount of information you can get from a good Chinese almanac because I wanted players to be able to get the gist of it, rather than to have to absorb a great deal of detail. I have no idea what my grandmother would have made of any of this, but I hope that that aspect of the game at least would have been somewhat recognisable to her.

Writing this game has been an interesting experiment for me in using elements of my culture that aren't often used in Cyberpunk games (or very many games at all, for that matter.) I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.