Matthew Ritter typically works on narrative design for larger game developers such as Telltale. But a couple of years ago he sought to try something more personal. The result is Welcome to Boon Hill – a “graveyard simulator.”
The idea is spend some time walking around the graveyard that Ritter has created, reading the epitaphs on the gravestones (of which there are over 2000 individually made ones), perhaps leaving flowers at some of them and talking to mourners who visit.
What you get out of Welcome to Boon Hill is up to you. There are no hard goals or narrative threads to chase. But Ritter has created a whole history or relationships and events for the town that the graveyard serves. This means that you may be able to form a narrative by reading the gravestones – as Ritter says, it’s about “inferred stories, about the connections people have that continue even after they die.”
It’s also not entirely serious as you lie in an open grave if you want to (haven’t you ever wanted to do that?) and the place is said to be haunted. You can check out Welcome to Boon Hill out for yourself on Steam and its website.
