1. Why “video” games? And when I ask this, the implication is not a critical take on videogames. Rather, it’s an amazement at the stagnation in the gaming industry, as users are fed similar dizzying experiences over and over. Should a playful online recess require eye-numbing photorealistic graphics as a quintessential?

2. What are the players taking away from this? Clearly, my despair with the existing visuals-heavy gaming experience was leading me somewhere - the question of what else, feels broken? Mechanics… yeah, the videogame mechanics of frantic clicks & keys seem to be almost the same since the time of arcade! In fact, they seem motivated by the shared ideals of driving addiction as symptom of heightened dopamine & adrenaline. In the blazing world of SM & apps already hijacking one’s brain’s receptors, this didn’t feel right. Worse, most videogames now feel like a recipe to fry those dopamine receptors up. No wonder, cozy games are becoming THE thing now. Though even among cozy titles, it was hard to find one that had dared to go beyond the normative ideas of a videogame.

BLUEGRASS: MINDFULNESS SIMULATOR And so, I dared. I worked full-time on a spatial-audio ASMR gaming experience that simulates the human mindfulness process, and put up the demo on Steam! As someone whose wellness - both mental & physical - has been wonderfully enriched by the mindfulness practices I learnt at the foothills of the Himalayas in India, I felt that sharing the gift of this demo might be the worthwhile thing to do this New Year.