The working documents
Everything the pitch is built on, in the order it was worked out — the insight, who plays it, how the two seats differ, who we excluded and fixed, where it sits in the market, how it reads against the fund’s criteria, what it looks like, and what the money does.
- 01-core-insight
The core insight
The comedy of service work is that the screen never explains itself.
Every unpleasant job shares one interface. A screen tells you what somebody wants. The screen will not tell you why they want it. There is a timer on it. Somebody who is not in the room decided the timer.
- 02-audience-research
Audience
Who is actually going to load this, and who are they going to make load it with them.
Gribble's is a two-player game with no account system, which means it has an unusual acquisition property: the first player recruits the second one in person, or over a link, within about a minute. Almost every design decision below exists to protect that minute.
- 03-player-journeys
Player journeys
Two seats, ninety seconds, no instructions.
The whole design target is stated as a single number: from cold link to first plate in the chute in under ninety seconds, with no account and no reading.
- 04-access-and-inclusion
Access, inclusion and accessibility
The barrier we removed first was the one nobody funds: needing an account.
Screen Australia asks how a project engages underserved audiences and reflects the values of the fund. Most answers to that question are about representation in content. Ours is mostly about who can physically get into the room, because a two-player game fails its second player far more often than it fails its first.
- 05-positioning
Positioning
A short, sharp, screenshot-shaped game in a market that has run out of short games.
Everything asymmetric-and-funny requires two things we removed: an install, and a purchase. Keep Talking needs a manual and a headset. Overcooked needs two copies or one couch. There is currently no funny asymmetric two-player game that a stranger can be in within ninety seconds of receiving a link — which is exactly the distribution shape that the format needs.
- 06-eligibility-and-assessment
Eligibility and assessment
Read against the published guidelines for the Emerging Gamemakers Fund, round closing 5pm AEST Thursday 27 August 2026.
This document is the cold-eyed one: what the fund asks, what we can prove, and where we are weak.
- 07-art-direction
Art direction
Wet asphalt, one warm window, and a sign that has been on since 1987.
A roadside franchise at eleven at night, in rain, somewhere with pines and a water tower. Pink and cyan neon reflecting off the car park. One window lit warm amber with booths visible through it. A squad car idling on the shoulder with its lights on, doing nothing about anything. Three regulars queueing outside who are not from here and are not commented on.
- 08-production-plan
Production plan
Six months, $30,000, one finished micro-game. No discovery phase, because the prototype already answered those questions.
Everything in this list is in the public playable build, and none of it is being funded twice: