Bub is a paper-cut memoir of a thousand cut pieces

Bub is built from paper—thousands of cut pieces, "slashes of ink and paint," collages photographed into a stop-motion world by hand. This week the paper traveled.

Case Jernigan and Todd Anderson, the two-person studio Paperfrog, brought the game to Amsterdam for a playtest and presentation at the Rijksakademie, followed by a showing at [untitled games event] #8 on Sept. 18—opening night of the series' first three-day weekender, which runs through Sept. 20. Jernigan announced the trip in a reel that doubles as a tour of the game's hand-cut cast.

The venue is half the story. [untitled games event] describes itself as a monthly "book club" of experimental games and interactive art, and it meets inside an art academy rather than a games festival; edition #8 is programmed around "big feelings, wrong feelings, unruly emotions." Bub belongs in that room. It's a narrative adventure about a New York painter and sculptor documenting chronic illness through artmaking—"turning your memories into art while you still can," as the Steam page puts it—and Jernigan, who lives with multiple sclerosis, has written that the story is autobiographical.

The credits run through comedy and music as much as games: comedian Whitmer Thomas (Weapons) voices Bub, Landlady's Adam Schatz composed the score, and Somepoint Sound handled the sound design. Anderson writes the code. Jernigan cuts the paper.

Killscreen has been a mark for handmade game worlds since Lumino City's papercraft village a decade ago, and Amanita Design digitized a real cardboard city just last month.

Bub reaches Steam in Q4 2027.