Greenhearth Necromancer
Silverstring Media is a queer-led, critically acclaimed game studio and narrative design firm known for crafting hopeful, imperfect worlds and filling digital spaces with love and cosmic awe.
Headquartered in Vancouver, B.C., the studio operates with a distributed team of talented individuals across Canada. Each member brings a distinct voice and valuable perspective, contributing to Silverstring’s deeply collaborative development process. Silverstring are world-builders at heart. The studio pushes the boundaries of digital media, storytelling, and experiential design—constantly experimenting with form and content. Their work is driven by a commitment to diversity, emotional depth, and a belief in the power of stories to inspire hope.
For over a decade, Silverstring Media has been a vital and vibrant force in the narrative indie game scene. Their portfolio includes a range of short experimental titles and active support of the “altgames” movement, along with narrative consulting on acclaimed indie titles such as Celeste, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, Manifold Garden, and Wandersong.
Following several years of collaboration with larger studios—including work on Flow Weaver for the Oculus Quest—Silverstring began its transition into a fully-fledged, self-contained development studio. In 2022, they released their first major in-house title, Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between, earning praise from critics and players alike.
BC Creates sat down with Lucas Johnson, Founder and Studio Director of Silverstring Media, to talk about the studio’s journey, its approach to storytelling and game design, and what it means to build digital worlds filled with wonder, identity, and intention.
How does queerness inform the identity or mission of Silverstring Media?
From its very inception Silverstring Media was a way for me to try to tell stories and to bring them to life in unique ways; queerness was always an important part of those stories because queerness is an important part of who I am. Back in 2010 when I was first getting into the industry, queer stories — especially in videogames — were still few and far between. I wanted to see myself reflected in games and wanted to provide similar opportunities for others if I could. Over time the team has expanded and now many of us identify as queer in some way, and this includes the other two owners of the studio.
However, queerness isn’t just about representation in characters, though that’s an important part of it; it’s also about celebrating feminism, diversity, sex positivity, and accessibility. It’s about how we approach storytelling, interactivity, and digital media more broadly. It’s about embracing experimentation, twisting expectations, and finding new places for old tropes. It’s about fighting oppression, speaking truth to power, and protecting rights of self-determination. It’s about imagining worlds where everyone has a path to thrive and live their truth, even if darkness and struggle still exist in those worlds as well.
What kinds of stories or themes are you most passionate about exploring through your games?
Over the last decade, the continuing and ever-evolving fight against fascism and other forms of authoritarianism has become a very important part of what we want to explore. We want to show the importance of bringing together communities and working towards common goods, and building coalitions that can bring together divided groups who nonetheless have common interests. There are so many stories about a lone hero or Chosen One — especially in games! — but that’s not how progress is made in the real world. How do we survive and thrive as queer folks in a world that continues to try to destroy us?
Our last game, Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between took an unusual approach to this by focusing on the player’s real life: you’re not playing a character so much as responding to the prompts, thoughts, questions, and assertions of these thoughtful and surreal travellers that appear around you. It’s about trying to create a space for introspection, to help you come to your own conclusions and self-awareness, as well as celebrating the beauty of the world despite its darkness. There are characters that are explicitly queer or disabled, and who talk about those aspects of themselves, but the queerness is more about an overall approach to understanding the universe around us and all the messy, wonderful parts of it and of ourselves. Finally, everyone who is working to make the world better (or even just struggling to survive) can benefit from having more restorative and hopeful places where they can rest and reflect.
Are there themes or genres you haven’t explored yet but really want to?
There’s always more that we want to do, and we’re generally excited to tackle any genre of game if we can give it our own unique spin. We’re looking for funding right now for projects that will more explicitly touch on the fight against rising fascism, as well as featuring authentic stories of trans lives that aren’t just about coming out. We are keen to tackle a visual novel/RPG concept — RPGs often invite us to imagine “perfect” or “optimized” characters, but we want to aim those kinds of mechanics at the messy and real dynamics of trying to grow better as a person. We also want to continue to build games in the Flowforged fantasy setting that we have already visited in our projects Azrael’s Stop and Flow Weaver VR. Someday we would love to make a big ol’ strategy game.
Admittedly, it’s a tough time to think big in this industry right now, but there are many important stories still to tell even at more humble scales.
What did you want to break or subvert about traditional game design?
We’re always looking to find a different angle or approach when we consider our game designs. Experimentation and innovation are core elements of our work. When we start conceiving a new project, we always ask ourselves what issues we see with well-trodden genres and mechanics, and look at how we can try something different (without losing what makes that genre attractive to an audience). It’s not one specific thing we want to subvert, but we try to look at every decision from multiple angles. A lot of traditional game design does focus on the player as an individual, their wants and needs, which are often seen through the lens of a traditional power fantasy. They often focus on trying to be as engaging as possible without respect for the player’s life outside of the game, for example. Taking back player agency is something we’re exploring with our current project, Greenhearth Necromancer.
What feedback from players has stayed with you?
Some of the reviews we’ve received for Glitchhikers are incredibly touching, folks who really got it, reflecting on how the game has helped them in ways big and small. One likened playing it to having “an infrequent but important conversation with an old friend” and that they came back to the game during moments when life was difficult for some comfort and space to think. You can’t beat that.
How does your work respond to, or diverge from, gaming’s dominant narratives?
Gaming is a massive and diverse industry with studios of all scales serving fanbases of all types. And while we’ve seen huge and sometimes very positive changes occur during our time as game developers, games still have a lot of problems in how they serve their audiences: many genres are inaccessible to huge swathes of players; game narratives still enshrine misogyny and lean on harmful stereotypes across the spectrum; and when it comes to worldbuilding, many devs continue to remix the same few ideas instead of creating new frameworks to understand today’s world. On the audience side, gamers are still very keen to support the familiar instead of embracing the different — and while most simply vote with their wallets, there are also those who organize harassment campaigns against developers, especially those who are queer, women, and BIPOC. We want our work to push back against all of that. But I also think we’re one of many in the industry, especially among smaller indie creators, who are all working to create space for queer and feminist storylines, to make games accessible to more people, to tell the stories that matter to them, and to do things differently.
What’s next for Silverstring Media?
We are currently deep in production on our next game, the aforementioned and recently announced Greenhearth Necromancer. Greenhearth Necromancer is a cozy, “semi-idle” game about raising a balcony garden using necromancy, turning the plants you couldn’t keep alive into undead ones. It’s going to feature a narrative about reframing failure, about finding community and belonging, about literally being magical but still having to navigate late stage capitalism, and most importantly about grief and healing.
Wishlist Greenhearth Necromancer on Steam ahead of its release. Discover more about Silverstring Media on their website, discover their projects, and keep up with their regular streams on Twitch.
This post is part of our Pride Month series, highlighting queer stories and creators from British Columbia’s creative industries.
