An estimated 72% of teens ages 13 to 17 play video games, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. Bridgette, a junior at Columbia River High School, took her love of gaming further and developed the concept for a game she called Lune.
Creating the concept art required a month’s worth of intensive work. Bridgette drew characters and settings. She studied professional game concept art to flesh out her submission with wire frames depicting screens, menus, dialogue and other details.
Then she submitted it to Google Play’s Change the Game Design Challenge, which strives to make mobile gaming more inclusive.
Now, Bridgette is one of just five winners from across the nation whose video game concepts Google Play selected for development and production. She’s collaborating with Girls Make Games to bring Lune to life.
Lune is set on an austere, abandoned moon colony. In homage to Alan Turing, Turin is the story-driven game’s protagonist. The advanced AI, capable of emotion, negotiates her human and mechanical qualities as she battles enemy aliens and forms alliances with other characters.
“I wanted to tell a story about identity and somehow create an identity over time,” Bridgette explained.
“As you move through the story, you make choices that change who you are and change how you fight and change how you act in the end, when you have to make a big decision.”
Although Bridgette first started gaming at age 10, her growing interest in art over the years led her to re-evaluate her favorite games through a different lens. For Lune, another interest also inspired her vision: cyberpunk, which explores themes such as machines versus humanity in a dystopian environment. A lunar setting seemed perfect for one of the game’s themes.
“It is that idea of loneliness and having to explore who you are on your own, because that’s a big part of life,” said Bridgette, who also is a member of the school’s Philosophy Club and participates in Mock Trial.
She attributes Lune’s creation in part to her own artistic exploration through Columbia River’s International Baccalaureate art program, led by teacher Jason Phelps. That creative freedom also may help explain fellow Columbia River student Christine Choi’s Change the Game win in 2018.
“That’s a big piece of what I’ve found, developing as an artist, that allowed me to make the submission—just having the time to explore on my own and explore my artistic tendencies,” Bridgette said.
“The art program here is incredible. We have so many opportunities to explore what we want, on our own.”
Lune has a targeted release date of Nov. 1.
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