Hello hello! I’m back from the internet void to share another big project with you (I promise small rant/rave posts will return someday). This latest project is Mine, a game demo with a fair bit of history: it began with a couple scripts I wrote in an undergrad creative writing course, became 3D in a political economy class I took for my master’s, and finally took the form you see here after receiving feedback at the 2025 International Conference on Games and Narrative (ICGaN). Now, I’m giving you this whole history partly to complain how long it takes to put an interactive idea into action, but really doing it to acknowledge all the folks that have allowed me to refine that initial idea. Specifically, I’d like to shoutout Dr. Wayne Defehr, Dr. Natalie Coulter, and the attendees who tested my demo at ICGaN. If you ever get a chance to work with any of these people, then take it!

As for Mine itself, I’d just say go in blind and play it. If you still want to know the premise, then all I’ll say is that you play as the caretaker of a water mining facility on an asteroid in the far-flung Suna System. You transport water and repair mining equipment, earning quantified rewards each time a passing spaceship refuels using the water you’ve extracted. However, things on the asteroid aren’t quite as simple as they seem, so I hope you’re ready for some hard work… in space!

If you’ve started playing and are stuck on the second water transport puzzle, want clarity on what happens in the final cutscene, or are curious about the inspiration behind the game, then feel free to keep reading. If you haven’t gotten to the second transport puzzle yet though, stop where you are and keep playing!

Following the (admittedly clumsy) hint left by the previous caretaker in their last journal entry, you can choose to waste the fuel in your tank, which then allows you to draw on your water haul for fuel. This washes a hidden message from the caretaker into your fuel tank, where they reveal that the Initiative had been similarly drawing out and exploiting their debt. They also state their suspicion that there is more to the facility and its clientele than meets the eye. Your character uses this as inspiration to stage a destructive escape by triggering an emergency which allows them to move a drill to the landing zone and use it to bust through its walls. There, they find that the water isn’t just for fueling passing spaceships; it’s also being used to grow opium. At that moment, an interior door opens and another suited person enters the facility. The screen cuts to black.

I made Mine as a riff off of Stardew Valley. With peace and love to that game–I really do think it’s exceptional and worth the success it’s achieved–I’ve been a bit frustrated with its popularity amongst players who view it as a virtual escape from real-world systems of labour exploitation. While it’s true that your character leaves their soul-crushing corporate cubicle at the beginning of the game, they only leave the corporation. They do not leave capitalism or subvert it in any meaningful way. Instead, they become the un-alienated and un-exploitative owner + worker of an idealized capitalist enterprise. Again, I don’t say this to suggest that Stardew is especially problematic amongst popular games or that it doesn’t have positive meanings. What I do mean to say is that simulators could do more to free up the labour imagination and afford players pleasures that go beyond the satisfaction of sidestepping exploitation. After all, who hasn’t wanted to give their boss a headache once in a while?