There's already a game about the Haitian Revolution. It's part of Assassin's Creed. You sneak around, you stab people, you "free the slaves"—and the game gives you an achievement notification.

Dom Rabrun thinks that's bullshit.

The Haitian-American painter and game designer is building Vèvè-Punk: Mind Singer, a game about the Haitian Revolution that refuses to let you pick up a weapon. Instead, you navigate Saint-Domingue's 16 racial classifications through dialogue trees, where saying the wrong thing to the wrong person can get you killed. Your protagonist isn't a soldier—she's a telepath and a singer. A free woman of color with zero strength, zero dexterity, and everything on the line.

Dom's work sits at the intersection of Haitian Vodou symbolism, Basquiat's visual language, and the kind of thoughtful, conversation-driven game design you'd find in Disco Elysium. He's part of a generation of artists who grew up with games, studied painting, then realized that interactivity might be the best way to tell certain stories.

But there's no lineage for what he's doing. Black filmmakers have Oscar Micheaux, Charles Burnett, Ava DuVernay. Black game designers? They're writing that history right now.

In this conversation, we discuss why physical violence is the laziest choice in games, what it means to hold a controller and "control" someone, and how Basquiat's painting Glenn taught him to think about right-clicking on reality. We also tackle the deeper question: when you're making a game about historical trauma, about enslavement, about revolution—how do you do that without replicating the very dehumanization you're trying to critique?

About Dom Rabrun: Dom's work merges technology, storytelling, and music into a cohesive creative system. Guided by his first-generation Haitian-American heritage, conservative Christian upbringing, and 15 years of experience in IT, he's developed a philosophy called "Vèvè-Punk," blending Haitian Vodou symbolism with futuristic Afro-Caribbean themes. In 2020, his video piece Dr. LaSalle, The Spider Queen, and Me earned first prize in a juried exhibition at the Phillips Collection. He was a 2022 fellow with Black Public Media, which is now executive producing his forthcoming video game. He lives and works in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Killscreen treats games and interactive media as cultural artifacts worthy of the same analytical rigor as film, literature, and art. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts.

Links: Dom Rabrun site and YouTube
Read the full article.

If you like what you're listening to, please consider becoming a member.

Big Buck Hunter made a quarter billion dollars by perfecting one thing: the tactile pleasure of pulling a trigger. This arcade shooter stripped hunting down to its essential tension—the moment before you fire, when your heart jumps and your hand trembles—then packaged it for drunk people in Brooklyn bars.

We read Jason Fagone's 2010 profile of the game's creator George Petro, who understood that the gun itself had to be an object of desire, calibrated like an iPhone for immediate satisfaction. The piece examines how Buck Hunter became morally complex without trying to be: a game that presents animals as innocent, majestic creatures, then asks you to shoot them anyway while chatting with friends over beer. It's the gap between the act and the environment that creates its under-the-skin power.

Fagone traces how an arcade game designed by non-hunters became the most lucrative shooter ever made, not through narrative sophistication but through understanding something older and weirder about human psychology. The sensation of shooting in Buck Hunter feels less like a video game and more like telling someone you love a lie—a tiny thrill followed by mostly subconscious regret, justified and moved past.

Originally published in Kill Screen Issue #1, Spring 2010. Get a physical copy if you are so inspired!

Music by Shiden Beats Music from Pixabay

Sound Effect by Universfield from Pixabay
Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay
Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

War games let you be a hero. Alan Kwan's games make you helpless.

In this conversation, we explore Scent—a 20-minute experience where you play a dog witnessing an unnamed war. No shooting. No saving. Just survival, souls, and the anxiety of watching violence you can't stop.

Kwan spent seven years developing Scent with no budget, transforming it from a sci-fi project about his father losing vision into a meditation on human brutality from an animal's perspective. The result premiered at Tribeca Festival 2025 and earned an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica.

But Scent is just the latest in a practice that's been questioning gaming's assumptions for over a decade. His previous game The Hallway sits in Hong Kong's M+ Museum permanent collection. Forgetter won multiple awards at international game festivals. His work has been exhibited everywhere from Ars Electronica to the Nam June Paik Art Museum.

What we discuss:

• Growing up in Hong Kong game arcades without actually playing—just watching couples sit in racing games, viewing virtual Tokyo sunsets like they were on dates
• Why he moved from filmmaking to experimental games and what cinema taught him about interactive storytelling
• The design philosophy of "witness without power"—rejecting superhuman abilities and open worlds for fragile bodies and limited control
• How he creates psychological immersion through grass sounds and spatial audio instead of haptics and high-tech solutions
• Working on rails: why Scent is structured like a long cinematic take where you follow the dog's back through horror
• The philosophy of keeping violence off-screen—learning from Zone of Interest and the power of implied brutality
• Why he calls it an "interactive cinematic experience" more than a game, and what his Steam-native students think about that distinction
• Teaching international students at SAIC who come from different gaming cultures—China's lack of console culture versus Western expectations
• The strange ethics of trigger boxes: if you don't start the game, the war won't happen
• His interest in cloud streaming to remove Scent from Steam's expectations and make it browser-accessible
• Why short cinematic games should exist as a format—rejecting the assumption that meaningful experiences require 25+ hours

Alan Kwan is an artist working at the intersection of cinema and videogames. Originally from Hong Kong, he holds an MFA from MIT and currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His experimental games and VR installations have been exhibited internationally and collected by major institutions including M+ Museum. His latest work, Scent, premiered at Tribeca Festival 2025.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Scent (2025) - available at [link]
• Forgetter (2021) with Allison Yang
• The Hallway (M+ Museum collection)
• Bad Trip (2011-12) - his first lifelogging game project
• Zone of Interest (film)
• Prix Ars Electronica
• Tribeca Festival
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)

Links:

• Alan's work: https://www.kwanalan.com/
• Killscreen newsletter: killscreen.com