In Palestine Skating Game, the soldiers can surround you
The crowdfunded team put occupation into the movement system itself
The latest devlog from Palestine Skating Game reads like any other production note, which is what makes it hit so hard: the team has given its IDF soldier characters procedural inverse kinematics and target tracking, so they can now surround the player, swing batons, and deal real damage. And the player can fight back. The video announcing it closes with a date of sorts: the Bethlehem beta level is on track for around December.
The game itself sits squarely in the Jet Set Radio lineage, skating and spraying graffiti through a futuristic Bethlehem to Arabic electronic music; the Palestinian rapper Asifeh's "Fi Hadal Habs" scores the early prototype, which already lets you roll along two kilometres of the real Separation Wall rebuilt in 3D, carrying two decades of its actual graffiti. The team's own pitch is seven words long: "five women & infinite paint against military occupation."
The people making it stay anonymous for their safety. Six developers and artists work across Gaza, Lebanon, Europe, and the United States; one of them is programming through the war itself, and told Aftermath that "this game has become more important now than at any other time." The project is crowdfunded, with most of the money going to hiring Palestinians and Lebanese.
I was talking with Danny on our podcast about the challenges of making games of this manner; the defaults are making someone complicit or robbing them of agency. This points to another avenue: the occupation is a movement system, and resistance is a paint stream mapped to resistance and freedom.
The rebuilt Separation Wall and the streets around it. Images: Palestine Skating Game
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