Haven
digital game
2024
Creative Director: Ashlyn Sparrow
Assistant Creative Director and Lead Writer: Patrick Jagoda
Programming Director: Nick Briz
Puzzle Lead: Sandy Weisz
Environmental Artist: Sarah Gavagan
Producers and Free Expression Specialists: Christopher Wild and Leila Brammer
Student Designers: Shayla Beltran, Evis Bleta, Kennedy Coleman, Madelyn Engler, Lucy Huang, Seva Khusid, Andrew Lin, Mack Minter, Milo Platz-Walker, Tejah Rana, Katie Reis, Kate Seiter, Jamie Shiao, Jenn Uche, and Emma Ziemba
Special Thanks: Kent Lambert, Kate Peteet, Arts Labs at the Media Arts Data and Design Center, Katelyn Yoshimoto, The University of Chicago College, Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse, The Weston Game Lab, and UChicago College Programming and Orientation
Haven is a multimedia role-playing game that includes storytelling, puzzle solving, and social elements. The game was designed to help orient new students at the University of Chicago to the Core curriculum, principles of free expression, and university life. Created by the Weston Game Lab and Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse, Haven offers an immersive experience in which players join Haven, a prestigious school in the Pacific Ocean in an unspecified moment in the future, which is made up of five islands: Artificial Island (sciences), Coral Island (arts), Oceanic Island (humanities), Tidal Island (social sciences), and Volcanic Island. Students participate in university life while trying to solve a mystery about the genesis of the school.
The current version of Haven, which was played by students in July and August 2024, is composed of 130,000 words, 47 puzzles, and countless image and audio files.
