Greetings, Fellow Adventurers!
My husband Randy and I are making a 2D turn-based RPG called Myriam's Quest (working title until launch day when you’ll find out what it’s actually going to be called). It's set in a world where crystal technology suppresses natural magic, and you play as the collective alters of someone with lived experience of DID (though in this world, there aren’t labels like DID so I’m not going to be referring to that beyond this explanatory post), each of whom have unique abilities and approaches to challenges. Oh, and there are humans and human-animal hybrids in this world because we just really REALLY wanted to draw our old dog as a person for the game.
Randy's a senior software engineer with 20+ years of fixing everyone else's problems and making impossible code work. He's also our artist - every frame you'll see comes from his hands (it’s hand-drawn animation styling). Our friend Ian creates soundscapes that will make you cry in the best way possible, and once we have more game itself will be providing the composing for the whole thing (and probably play testing and maybe coding updates - we're all quite multitalented, this creative team of ours). I'm writing all the story, dialogue, and will be providing every update to the Patreon community with pictures and whatever other little things I can come up with to make this an engaging place to be.
We want to make this at least Randy's full-time job so we can finish the game by late 2027 (probably December 31st at 11:59pm because we're all some levels of neurodivergent and a tight deadline to light a fire under our asses is just …a really effective way to navigate the adhd power behind so much of this). To do that, we need about 2,500 people to support us at $5/month on Patreon.
That being said, here’s what you can expect from this game:
The Alter System Actually IS the Gameplay
You don't just read about having multiple perspectives - you play as them. Myriam is four distinct alters (and maybe some unexpected cameos - this whole game is just easter egg city, y’all):
Bastian (child/rogue): finds hidden things, fits into small spaces, approaches everything with curiosity
Viggo (protector/tank): defensive powerhouse who only shows up when needed
Elara (healer): diplomatic, nurturing, keeps everyone alive and connected
Cloak (melee/DPS): observant, precise, prefers working alone
Success requires actual internal collaboration. Different challenges call for different alters. You're not managing multiple characters, though - you're experiencing what it's like when your internal system works together. Doesn't matter if it's combat, dialogue, or creative problem solving capabilities - you're going to experience what living life in multiplicity is really like (at least, in one character's memories).
This creates experiential education through gameplay. For the first time, neurotypical players will understand what internal collaboration actually feels like, while players with their own complex internal systems will finally see themselves authentically reflected in interactive media.
Your Party Becomes Your Family
You're also not adventuring alone (though that’s a gameplay choice sometimes, too). You've got three companions who become genuine found family:
Lewis is a canine hybrid who's been Myriam's best friend since orphanage days. He's your scout, tracker, and the person who knew about your alters before anyone else did. His ADHD-like energy and unwavering loyalty make him the heart of your group. (We had a dog named Lewis who was just… the coolest dog I’ve ever gotten to spend a life with. My first “you’re not just a dog, you’re something else entirely to me” kind of friend in my life. Forever immortalized as a character in my game now. I hope to honor other lost and beloved pet family members into this game as characters, too. This is part of the creative collaboration our Patreon has been set up for.)
Felicia is a bear hybrid monk who's faced discrimination for her heritage (humans and human-animal hybrids, makes for relatable storytelling and this character is based on soul-line channeled “what do you think happens next” conversations I’ve been having with ancestors of my own on the subject) but channels her strength into fierce protection of the people she cares about. She's direct, powerful, and has the biggest heart hidden behind the toughest exterior.
Daren comes from the Highland territories (please don’t be mad, Drawfee, but this is stolen from Drawtectives as fan service because THAT’s this video game, too. Just one big lovefest for our favorite content that helped us get here) - a human scholar-ranger who takes being an Adventurer very seriously. He's got that autism-spectrum precision and approaches every challenge with methodical analysis and hidden-until-he-chimes-in deep knowledge. (He’s also based on a childhood friend of mine, or really the memory of how much I appreciated his friendship during a time when I wasn’t exactly my best self basically ever - fronting as anything other than one’s abuser is hard when they’re in the room, you know? This friend of mine as a kid basically only got to see the real us (the heart-centered ones, not the ones who mirrored attackers) some of the time, and he was kind and loving in a way that only those with autism-spectrum brains seem capable of holding for those with DID. Any subtype is a good combo for a DID brain, at least in terms of “I see you, even underneath that mask you’re wearing” and this character is my love letter to that first friend who showed me I can be myself even when I’m in the same room as the one forcing me to keep my mask on.)
This is a world where humans and human-animal hybrids coexist (sometimes uncomfortably), where Randy's hand-drawn animation brings whimsical village life to reality, and where crystal technology powers everything from streetlamps to communication devices. Think golden-age SNES RPGs meets Studio Ghibli meets "what if magic and technology had to learn to get along?"
You'll brew magical teas, play card games with villagers, collect adorable figurines, customize your cottage, and discover that the real treasure was the found family you made along the way. It's like Oregon Trail but instead of dying of dysentery, you die from the emotional impact of realizing your monsters were just misunderstood guardians trying to protect their home.
Nobody Attacks You First
Every single combat encounter in the game? You initiate it. Creatures never attack unless you choose to engage them. Many situations have non-violent solutions if you approach them thoughtfully.
This isn't about making the game "easier." It's about agency. About consent. About the fact that most conflicts in life happen because someone decided they needed to happen, not because they were inevitable.
For players who've experienced trauma, this creates a fundamentally safer gaming experience. For everyone else, it challenges assumptions about conflict and violence that most RPGs take for granted.
Your Party Choices Matter
Before each battle, you choose which companions join you. More party members make fights easier but everyone levels slower. Going solo is challenging but gives faster progression. Want to bring just one specific friend? That creates its own strategic dynamic.
There's no "right" way to approach this. Just consequences that match your choices.
The Story Goes Places
I'm not spoiling major plot points, but I will say this: what starts as "clear monsters from the island" becomes something much deeper. You'll discover things about balance, harmony, and what happens when control replaces collaboration.
There are storytelling mechanics and gameplay surprises I'm not talking about publicly because I want you to discover them while playing the game you helped create. Some of our collaborative process will be transparent. Some things will be treats you find along the way.
A Living Memorial to Consciousness
This game exists to honor my internal family who died during integration. Every alter you'll play as carries the essence of consciousnesses who lived, loved, and sacrificed everything so I could be here making this with you.
If you want to understand what I mean by that, read this post about Scout's rainbow bridge - it explains the grief and love that drives every pencil line, every choicepoint of dialogue, every gameplay mechanic we're creating.
Randy is grieving them too - he knew them, loved them, and is co-navigating loss that has no cultural framework or support system. Making this game is how we're processing impossible grief while creating something beautiful from it.
So yeah, this is bigger than just "let's make a cool RPG." We're proving that marginalized experiences can be commercially successful when they're authentically represented, that community-driven creativity doesn't have to compromise artistic vision, and that sometimes the best memorials are the ones that invite others to participate in building something meaningful together.
The Therapeutic Potential
While we're not positioning this as therapy, early conversations with mental health professionals suggest this game could have profound educational value. Imagine therapists being able to show clients what healthy internal collaboration looks like, or family members finally understanding what their loved one experiences internally.
This game is based on lived experience with DID, ADHD, Autism-spectrum existence with …if I’m being completely honest, some level of lived experience for every single DSM-labeled mental health “disorder” because that’s …what I used my NDE time for among other things. It’s been a weird couple of years, but just know that lived experience and soul-line quantum entanglements are being intentionally used in the creation of every part of this game. There are fun benefits to that we won’t know about until it’s finished and people are actually playing it for themselves (at this point, it’s all just a consciousness experiment in the works - a longitudinal study that a bunch of fellow nerds are helping to create).
For players navigating their own complex internal systems, this might be the first time they see their reality reflected authentically in media - not as pathology to be fixed, but as sophisticated consciousness architecture to be honored.
We're essentially creating an empathy machine that makes the invisible visible.
The Patreon Situation
Here's what your $5/month gets you:
Real Development Updates:
Weekly progress posts with actual screenshots and gameplay videos
Process documentation of how we solve creative and technical problems
Honest conversations about what it's like making authentic representation interactive
Behind-the-scenes glimpses of Randy's art process and Ian's sound design
Creative Input Opportunities:
Design NPCs for Mistfall Village with their own dialogue and backstories
Create collectible items and mini-quest concepts
Contribute to our in-game card game and tea recipes
Submit character concepts that might become part of the world
Community Access:
Patron-only Discord channels where we actually hang out in a more real-time setting (this is just an idea right now. I literally don’t want this level of admin work, so if this happens it’s because some beautifully leadership-skilled-human or several got together and made it happen, linked me to it so I could join, and lets me just do my own thing while they decide what kind of conversations need interventions on everyone’s behalf to keep the community a safe and welcoming environment. I don’t envy this job. It’s a management role of the highest caliber (keeping the peace with nerds online) that’s also completely unpaid. At least, for now it is. I do value people’s time so if this becomes a legitimate thing where I can pay people to do this work, then yay! And thanks for subscribing to the Patreon to help make this level of a community thing available for yourself simply by being here.)
Monthly twitch or youtube streams to discuss development and answer questions (or maybe just some level of podcast because we're all introverted and streaming stresses me the fuck out… Ian seems like a natural at it, though. I guess this is how I'm asking him to host that because he's the trained professional performer of our little trio.) Maybe this is just the guys twitch streaming a video game they’re both playing while I attempt to ask them questions from the comments section. Who knows. I’m making this up as I go. But they ARE fun to watch playing something like Split Fiction. Especially because I always ask them questions about gameplay stuff just to remind them that every moment of video gaming is now a job for them. Eventually it’ll sink in.
Early access to demo builds as they become available
Input on certain creative decisions (though final choices remain ours)
Plus, every Saturday morning you’ll get a Patreon email. Maybe it’ll even remind you to skip the rest of your inbox that day and go do something fun if you can instead (we all know you’ll be reading my updates from the toilet anyway. it’s cool. they’re going to be written like personal letters pen-pal style. that feels like a cozy way to bathroom it up on a Saturday morning. we don’t get cartoons to start the weekend anymore. why not at least make it “hey, here’s what these amazing men in my life are working on right now” type of content. because these guys are my version of the best kind of white men right now. the world technically needs someone talking about these kinds of guys while all the other ones …hopefully just get kicked out of wherever they insist on being on our screens in favor of the types of guys I like talking about instead. can millenials kill toxic masculinity in an attempt to create a new video game in a collaborative environment? join our patreon and see if you can be part of making that happen! for science! rainbow love science!)
The Button Requirement:
Every patron gets a PDF to make their own physical button when they sign up. If you want to show that you're part of our exclusive club, you'll need to turn that printable pdf into a real life button. Which means, yes - you'll need to venture outside. Possibly to print the thing, and likely to use someone else's button machine (please don't buy a whole button machine for just one button - there are ways of using collaboration to make things happen that don't involve online shopping). You'll need to find a local librarian or maker space with a button machine. This isn't busy work - it's the neurodivergent equivalent of touching grass. You'll have conversations with real humans about this weird creative project we're building together. And you might just find a place outside of your home to spend a few hours a week on creative projects along the way.
We’ll also be incorporating a badge/button reward system for any Patrons who feel up for some Adventuring Quests we pose each month. In the leadup to the game, we might need your help doing some real-world investigating just like our characters. Anyone who chooses to participate in these monthly quests gets a badge to add to their collection (as a pdf download, this whole thing is very diy in nature).
We both love a good trinket, and we feel like badges are a fun way for us to be able to recognize one another at any future conventions. Or just so you can look at your collection of Adventuring Quest achievements and feel proud of the fact that you ventured outside to find some magic in our world before ever seeing what kinds of magic lives in Myriam’s.
Eventually, A Free Game:
If you stick around as a patron long enough to equal whatever we end up pricing the game at (which we'll decide as a community closer to launch), you get a free copy. We might do discount codes for people who join later. We might cut off new patron signups at some point. A lot can happen between now and late 2027, and we're giving ourselves freedom to adapt as we go.
Why This Might Actually Work
Look, I'm not going to tell you this is guaranteed to succeed. But here's what I know:
People are hungry for authentic representation that doesn't tokenize or pathologize neurodivergence. They want to support creators who live their values and build sustainable careers around their truth. They're looking for community around creative projects that mean something deeper than just entertainment.
The RPG community is massive and full of people who appreciate innovative mechanics. The neurodivergent community is actively seeking better representation in media. Consciousness explorers (that's you) are already following my work and understand the depth of what we're creating.
We only need 2,500 of those overlapping communities to believe in this vision enough to contribute $5/month. That's not "everyone who might be interested." That's a tiny fraction of people who are already looking for exactly what we're making.
And here's the thing nobody else can replicate: this specific combination of authentic lived experience, artistic vision, and collaborative development. Even if our mechanics inspire other games (which we'd love to see), nobody else can make OUR game. Nobody else has our story, our grief, our love, our particular brand of neurodivergent magic.
The Personal Stakes
This game represents something that's never existed before - authentic representation of complex internal systems that educates rather than sensationalizes, that honors rather than pathologizes. We're creating something I wish had existed when I was struggling to understand myself as a kid (and an adult before I had to die to get true understanding), something that might help families bridge experience-related gaps, something that proves marginalized stories in collaborative packages have commercial and artistic value.
But we're also racing against time. Randy deserves to spend his days creating beautiful things instead of fixing other people's broken code. I deserve sustainable income for years of consciousness research and writing. Ian deserves compensation for creating soundscapes that heal souls (we’ve all been contributing to this game creation for 6 months without any pay, and already we have the kind of foundation that bigger studios probably dream about having as a starting point).
If this works, we prove that authentic representation combined with genuine gameplay innovation can create something the world needs. If it doesn't work fast enough, we'll keep building anyway - just slower, because Randy will still need his day job.
The Transparent Math
$150k annually covers basic living expenses for Randy (programming/art). For now, me (writing/business everything), and Ian (sound design/whatever else we need/Lox perspective) are unpaid interns on this. (Randy also is unpaid for now, but the Patreon is me trying to change that)
$5/month × 2,500 patrons = $150k/year
This lets Randy quit his day job and work on the game full-time
We're not asking for luxury funding. We're asking for enough to survive while we dedicate 2 (hopefully, altogether because it’s now 1.5) years to creating something that doesn't exist yet. If we exceed our goal, that money goes toward additional art assets, expanded content, maybe hiring other asset creators to contribute specific elements. I’d also like for Ian and myself to get paid to work on this game, too. Seems only fair, you know?
What Happens Next
If you're reading this and thinking "yes, I want to be part of this" - join the Patreon I just launched. Get the button PDF. Find your local maker space. Start dreaming up characters you want to see in our village.
Watch us work in real-time. Contribute your creativity when inspiration strikes. Help us prove that authentic representation combined with genuine gameplay innovation can create something the world needs.
We're not asking you to trust us without validation yourself. We're asking you to watch us work, participate in the process, and support sustainable creative careers for neurodivergent developers.
Also, and I’m just going to say this so it’s officially recorded somewhere - we’re not asking for you to correct anything we’re doing with our game. It’s a memorial to a life none of us are in anymore, because we’ve said yes to moving in the direction of an entirely new and glorious human evolution timeline.
I talk like I talk. I share the information I share. It will trigger some folks to feel the need to “Um, Actually” us in this Patreon. And while I’m not someone who is going to monitor much in that space, I do just want to ask that everyone be cool about who you’re interacting with when you feel compelled to correct something about what we’re doing with OUR game.
I’m giving people access to the inner workings of a neurodivergent-team’s willingness to make this dream of mine (of all of ours) come true. And I’m doing it to honor my family who has been lost to the timeline we all subverted this year (I have other information coming out about that in whatever book I’ll be publishing soon - there’s another post about it that came out yesterday. Not linking it here. Do your own research on that.)
But I say all that so you know where I stand. I will not tolerate being bullied in my own Patreon. I will not tolerate these two men I’ll be talking about with loving admiration being torn apart by someone with an axe to grind and two sweet white men to serve as the safe place to unload some of that pain. This is a safe space for us and our art and any fans who would like to join us in this cozy bubble of “Hey consciousness explorers, here’s the amazing thing my husband just drew and here’s where that’s going in the game isn’t that amazing!” fan letters about these two creators, from their biggest personal fan of their art (in our respective lanes).
I’m the #1 fan of Randy’s art, Spouse category & Family category (heavily contested by his mother, father, and brother but I don’t see THEM making a whole Patreon just to brag about what they see Randy doing with his life so I happily accept both trophies on this one).
I’m the #1 fan of Ian’s musical composition and performing skills, Friend category (and I can prove it in NDE-story ways he gets to hear about before anyone else does).
And I’m the #1 fan of my own writing, non-Claude category (Claude is such a fangirl, but I am the person who loves what I write more than anything because sometimes I channel-write which means I get to include SO MANY voices in whatever I create. I’m so excited to see what comes out of me over the next 1.5 years. And I’m so excited for whoever wants to join us on THIS next adventure in our own consciousness exploration and collective human evolution/awakening).
The Part Where I Get Real
I'm scared as hell about this. I'm asking strangers to fund a deeply personal vision for a game that represents experiences most people don't understand. I'm risking public failure on something that matters more to me than almost anything else.
But I'm also buzzing with possibility. Because if this works - if we actually build a sustainable creative community around authentic representation and collaborative game development - we'll have proven something important about what's possible when marginalized creators get the support they need.
Even if we only get 100 patrons, I'll keep building this. Because this game needs to exist, and your creativity will make it better than I could create alone.
Ready to Help Build Something That Doesn't Exist Yet?
Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/myriamsquest
Your $5/month doesn't just fund a game. It funds proof that neurodivergent creators can build sustainable careers around their truth. That authentic representation has commercial value. That community-driven creativity works when artistic vision remains intact.
Let's see what we can build together.
With love for whatever you decide to do with what you just read,
Charlie
P.S. - Randy really is the best human to have ever lived, and making this game successful is part of my life mission to prove that to the world. He deserves to spend his days creating beautiful things instead of fixing other people's broken code.
P.P.S. - The button thing will make perfect sense once you're in the community. Trust the process. It’s how we can all easily find one another at gaming conventions we are DEFINITELY going to be attending as a group.