FEMICOM Museum recently held the first of a new series of game jams, “FEMICOM Game Jam #1: Here’s to Theresa Duncan!” In total, 12 games were submitted for the jam, many featuring really lovely graphics that I think make a perfect tribute to Duncan’s own game design work, which always seemed like some kind of great punk rock/folk art mashup for girls.

Screen capture from the FEMICOM Jam #1: Here’s to Theresa Duncan! home page.

The jam was held in part to celebrate RHIZOME’s recent successful effort to make Duncan’s classic titles, Chop Suey, Smarty, and Zero Zero available online. These were highly successful titles, and Chop Suey was hailed as one of the best software titles of 1995, but because of the way the software market worked, within a few months, the game was all but impossible to find. I scored an original copy on eBay a few years ago, but I’m so happy to see these games getting a second life. Leigh Alexander did a nice little write-up of the jam over at Off World.

I made my own game for the jam. I had some more ambitious plans, including further illustrations, but instead it’s a Twine game with one illustration. It’s a short interactive story called “Totally Rexed” about what it might be like to have a miniature dinosaur as a pet. It’s free to play online, and it is available right here.