Dreaming of piss with Domino Club
Domino Club is a pseudo-anonymous internet collective that makes weird, horny, and genre perverting videogames. In this episode I’m joined by Domino Club card carrying members Emma (she/her), Nat (she/they), and Rose (she/her) to chat about the group’s origins, its unconventional approach to anthology projects, and how all these games are secretly just for them. We also dive into their latest jam, Humors & Humus, to discuss how each member approached the chickpea-less theme.
You can find all of Domino Club’s games on itch and their website, and the group on Twitter @club_domino.
Domino Club’s Cool Things to Share (more down below)
- Rose: Cecil B. Demented (John Waters, 2000)
- Nat: the films of Sarah Jacobson
- Emma: people who have been inspired by Domino Club to make their own game groups
Domino Club Games Discussed
- HACKER//SUCKER//LOSER (Humors & Humus Jam, 2023)
- Adverse Possession (Humors & Humus Jam, 2023)
- Ziptie Choker (Humors & Humus Jam, 2023)
- The Devil’s Imago (Humors & Humus Jam, 2023)
- PISSED-ON PETITE PERVERT (Humors & Humus Jam, 2023)
- Greaser (Metal & Flesh Jam, 2022)
Other Things Discussed
- Believeinthe.net
- Garden’s of Vextro (vextro, 2022)
- Donating My Body To Science (Heavens To Betsy, 1994)
- FREEYOUTUBEMP3DOWNLOAD
- Mutant Hunt (Tim Kincaid, 1987)
Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nathalie, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one and supporting KRITIQAL on Ko-Fi.
Additional answers from other Domino Club members
Q: Could you talk a bit about how the club began? Besides collaborating on cool games, are there any high level goals/ethos (or hard nos) that inform how the club is run?
candle
Critical to the ethos, for me, is domino club as a series of events enjoyed communally and evolving with the group consensus. It started as one thing inspired by another, and over the iterations we're trying to really talk things out to shape it into exactly what we want it to be
Personally, beyond just the social game making side, I enjoy it as an attempt at prefiguring an alternative game production: here's a way of game making among peers, something that feels sustainable even if not a single person outside of domino club ever cared. Each jam you're making something that you know is going to be played, celebrated, and understood by at least a few other people — I think a lot of us are tired of the indignity of pouring our heart into the void and hoping for connection
Freya
A lot of domino club members met making bitsy games and hanging out on the bitscord a while back. I really liked the kind of cross-pollination and creator-and-player community there, with people making and playing each others games as part of an enthusiast community for the engine. Some of that same energy is in domino club, with the “making for ourselves” enthusiast vibe kinda formalized. While obviously not a single-engine community, there’s a bunch of recurring engines used and/or made by members and iterated on with each jam, and that same “look what i made, fellow domino” focus instead of mass audience focus.
Q: One of the things that feels unique to Domino Club compared to other anthology groups is that it rejects both individuality and financial incentives. Could you talk a bit about how this move away from personal career building towards something intentionally scaled and communal has shaped the club? Do you think this will ever change?
Dr. Beef
I used domino club clout to get a job, so individualism is in there somewhere. It will only change when the Domino Club movie 'Domino Club Destroys the World' is released and we all get Oscars.
Tom
A huge part of the appeal of working with domino club for me is the fact it is actively repellent from the kind of clout chasing horseshit so much of games are about. The anonymity gives people the chance to release games that are unreleasable, too horny or unapproachable or copyright infringing for main.
I know that I personally have been getting a lot more out of game development since I started making weird joke games for my friends in and around domino club and stopped pretending that pivoting this into a career was a viable or even desirable outcome. I can imagine a world where we fundraise to help out someone in the club but I can’t imagine us trying to spin this into a for profit venture, it’s not about that.
foto
I feel like the spirit of domino club is hard to separate from freeware games in terms of how short or boggling or fucked up a game is allowed. It's just some thing you download to your computer and that's enough. I don't mean this as a diss towards other ways of doing things but I'm tired of "we need more x in games" bitch having to promise x hours of gameplay or x boobs of every blizzard diversity graph axis already precludes it! What happened to having a good time!
I don't give a shit if someone gets clout off domino club but I think it would be interesting to see how they manage to sanitize it enough to land a job at some kind of Annapurna fiefdom studio lol
candle
In many aspects domino club is highly individual. Each game may be "from domino club" but they are by individuals, isolated until release. collectively we're not judging or endorsing the particular works, just nurturing and respecting the act of making them at all.
In that vein, I'm really against "domino club" itself having a voice: rather than someone trying to speak for domino club we should be hearing the individual members speaking from their experience of domino club.
And as for financial incentive, I think we're mostly all jaded enough to think that trying to monetize anything is messier, more fraught, and far more work than it'd actually be worth. There's easier ways for us to support each other financially than trying to engage with the games industry.
sean
I already had a career in the games industry when domino club started, and now I don’t, so I’d say it’s going great for me.
Struggling with phrasing here but i think it should be said that domino club is mostly not actually anonymous, some of us continue to work in the industry, some domino members/games are literally also in the same commercial anthologies the question is probably contrasting us against... I think candle spoke to the “it is actually individual” aspect well but this question feels kinda presumptive, like it implies doing these things is hypocritical. Imo the key thing here is the attitude and process we take into making stuff, and we aren’t prescribing to people what they do with it after.
Q: The most recent jam as of recording is your sixth, Humors & Humus. It seems like the jam themes intentionally allow for a fair amount of interpretation and variety, but I’ve also noticed a lot of similar themes and shared reference points between entries. Could you talk about how a jam theme comes together, and how much commonality between entries arises from collaboration vs happenstance?
Freya
I think some of the subconscious/accidental themes are part of implicitly/explicitly building on and being inspired by previous games. A lot of us were also regular bitsy game makers and that community had a similar sort of thing - riffing on other people’s games (thematically, mechanically, in conversation with, etc) so that no game stands alone and each is instead part of a wider context. It’s fun to trace inspirations and stuff through the jams like this, and I think is a benefit of being an ingroup happy to share stuff like this. Explicitly riffing on non-friends work in the same way always feels less open…
foto
Being a bunch of people who talk to each other regularly and watch movies and stuff i think it's easy for common reference points to appear sort of spontaneously, I think that's pretty cool. Plus the previous jams I think kinda form a sort of common ground of inspiration themselves. I pretty much ignored the theme this time but it was amusing how many similarities between games appeared regardless. Still, I am a little bit of a contrarian so I end up trying to accentuate my own idiosyncrasies (difficult gameplay, rpg with combat, inscrutable ass mystery) bordering on being a little bit of an asshole. It's a fun dynamic lol
IAN
Like foto, I like being a contrarian; I think having a shared canon or set of themes is fun but it's also fun to respond by going against it. I like that you can find common themes and motifs that connect everything, that's definitely part of the appeal, but I love the extreme diversity between games all sharing a single theme. If we were too much of a hivemind I think it would get boring, and those little moments of accidental connection or "hidden themes" would get lost.
I was a little worried with my recent game that it would be TOO contrarian, but part of the fun is that a lot of us kind of ARE contrarians, and instead of being a negative or an obstructive thing, it can be constructive and lead to exciting new nooks and crannies.
Q: What has been your favorite theme and why?
candle
One of the themes for the tri-jam was a video clip of extremely hamfisted exposition from a sci-fi b-movie, ending with "ever since the space shuttle sex murders". I love how much that conjures up, and that you could imagine any one of the hundreds of sexy sci-fi slasher movies as being some pivotal moment in the history of this one.
Emmeken (emmeke)
(In an attempt of the cadence from the movie) “ever since the space shuttle sex murders” is from Mutant Hunt, a movie by Tim Kincaid who also did gay movies under the name ‘Joe Gage’ kinda like us making gay stuff under different names!
Dr Beef
Metal & Flesh, because metal and flesh are both cool.
onion
Metal & Flesh was my most productive so far which I think was because I found it really fun! I like to explore themes of aro/ace spectrum and robots and androids are good for it so it was easy inspiration haha
sean
Space shuttle sex murders, hands down. It’s such a simultaneously specific and open-ended thing, evocative and goofy as hell.
IAN
I'm sad that I missed out on the space shuttle sex murders jam, but I lowkey kind of liked "underground". It's fun when a single word can mean so many different things, and I think it makes it all the more surprising when someone goes really far out of the box.
Tom
Metal & Flesh absolute banger jam, lots of absolutely unhinged games, we went wild with that one.
cecile
Metal & Flesh felt very cohesive and a lot of the games from that jam resonated with me. Banger jam.
Q: How did you approach your game for the Humors & Humus jam, and how do you feel about it post-release?
IAN
For Forest Memories I wanted to make a story about the medieval period built on the idea of it as a backward, dirty time, and compare that to our current backward, dirty time. I also drew a lot of inspiration from my childhood on rpg maker forums & newgrounds, playing weird, pointlessly disgusting games with no real goal beyond being edgy.
I've been thinking a lot about the artistic value of things that are gross and cruel for no reason. I like how the game turned out, and I'm okay admitting it was me now, but I think the possibility of remaining anonymous really gave me the freedom to push the poor taste and explore an idea that might turn out unlikeable or unpleasant.
Emmeken (emmeke)
Pissed on Petite Pervert was kind of a last minute idea, I had another member and someone else to quickly make a script to make an animation of bipsi rooms. I did it in like two nights. I’m big on macro micro furries even if that makes it obvious that I made the game; everyone knows the rainbow dash cum jar, but I think pissing in a jar is funnier, or hornier depending on your kinks. Art is all about eliciting emotions, and funny and horny are pretty enjoyable emotions! Some little fellas just wanna get pissed on by the equivalent of 50 kiloliters of piss!
foto
(tear ripple) I totally ignored the theme this time lol. I did try to do something with the subtheme of "decay" but it kind of ended up as a subplot. I had been reading Umineko mate what can i say. It's good. I love tear ripple it's a banger visual novel honestly but I wish I had enough mind power to write twice as many words.
cecile
(The Devil’s Imago) I wanted to get way out of my usual writing comfort zone [namely sci-fi and ‘modern’ settings] and just decided to make a period piece, which led me to doing a bunch of research. I had a core idea from the get go — a story about temptation, subconscious desire and the devil — and as I was writing it I sort of inevitably landed into themes of class struggle, state violence and unfathomable evil.
The result is very strong, a big part of why it works is my collaborator (isyourguy, not a domino member) is incredibly good at making fucked up good sounds. and at making this game engine too.
Q: I like to have each guest close out the show with something that has inspired or given them hope recently. This can be pretty much anything, but just something that has been meaningful to you that you'd like more people to know about.
Emmenken (emmeke)
Shout out to macro furries, we love paws, I love paws.
Dr Beef
Free Palestine
Tom
I’ve been rewatching Channel Zero: No End House, it’s very domino club, full of body horror nasties and problematic faves.
IAN
Watched & loved The Deadly Spawn and Divinity recently. they're campy genre flicks with lots of gore and cool monsters and horniness and weirdness.
candle
Read Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
sean
aria’s love & dehumanization
cecile
Played this really good local (to me, in melbourne australia) student game called Trail of the Wretched, excellent work and hugely recommended for anyone who likes games where you read a lot about a pathetic guy having the worst time of his life.
Freya
My partner got me into Neil Breen and similar “outsider art” films… I like getting that window into someone’s creative mind unfiltered by mainstream commercial interests.