Dot’s Home

Summary

DOT’S HOME is a video game that follows a young Black woman in Detroit as she travels through time to relive key moments in her family’s history where race, place, and home collide in difficult choices. The game aims to allow players to see the harmful systems that dictate our relationship to race and place through the eyes of those impacted, and asks the question of how much choice families really have in the face of redlining, urban renewal, and gentrification.

Features

1. DOT’S HOME is a single-player video game that follows a young Black woman in Detroit as she travels through time to relive key moments in her family’s history.
2. The game aims to allow players to see the harmful systems that dictate our relationship to race and place through the eyes of those who are most impacted.
3. DOT’S HOME is an interactive experience that inserts players into scenarios where they have to make choices about how and where to live in the midst of redlining, urban renewal, and gentrification.
4. The game asks the fundamental question: “How did your family end up where they are today, and how much choice did they really have?”
5. DOT’S HOME is set in Detroit and focuses on the themes of race, place, and home.

Keywords

* Dot’s Home
* single-player
* 2D
* narrative-driven
* video game
* young Black woman
* Detroit
* grandmother’s home
* time travel
* race
* place
* home
* harmful systems
* relationship to race
* urban renewal
* gentrification
* family history
* redlining
* choice
* interactive experience
* player choices
* fundamental question

DOT’S HOME is a single-player, 2D, narrative-driven video game that follows a young Black woman in Detroit living in her grandmother’s beloved home, as she travels through time to relive key moments in her family’s history where race, place, and home collide in difficult choices.

As an interactive experience, DOT’S HOME allows players to see the harmful systems that dictate our relationship to race and place, through the eyes of those that are most impacted. By inserting the player into scenarios where they have to make choices about how and where to live in the midst of redlining, urban renewal, and gentrification, we ask a fundamental question: “How did your family end up where they are today, and how much choice did they really have in that journey?”

DOT’S HOME is a production of the Rise-Home Stories project: a creative collaboration between multimedia storytellers and housing and land justice advocates who have come together over the course of three years, to reimagine the past, present, and future of our communities by transforming the stories we tell about them.