Daniel Turcotte

Concept: “One moment you're living your life in the everyday world of smart phones and student loans. Next thing you know, you're out on the streets of CY, everyone you've ever known is dead and nothing makes sense anymore.”

Content: A class for the outcast who loves reflecting on their situation with critical distance and who wants to lean hard on being a fish out of water. 

Writing: Hilarious pastiches of the “relic” trope through media with the occasional heart-rending vignette/idea that underscores the terror of life in CY.

Art/Design: Really bold yellow/pink color scheme for text-heavy content with an adorably wary pencil sketch of a relic looking over their shoulder. 

Usability: High contrast fore/ground and easily recognizable content blocks make for easy recognition of the purpose for every element.

Concept: “You don’t remember who owned you, just that you used to belong. Maybe you went out of fashion. Maybe someone outgrew you. Some tech-head fished you out of the gutter, patched you up and set you loose on the streets, burdening you with the curse of sapience, just for kicks.”

Content: A class for anyone who wants something big–and violent, and terrifying–in a small package. Making this happen is child’s play, really.

Writing: Hilarious class details/features with which to develop a nuanced murder-bot that can hold its own without feeling one-note. 

Art/Design: Vivid sketch of an example character atop a psychedelic background pattern. Text blocks in different fonts and colors provide distinct information across spread.

Usability: Visually distinct text areas provide distinct types of content. Some of the text can be a bit difficult to read against the busy background pattern.

Concept: “You were uplifted for slave labor but that ended up being one Corporate abomination too far. Protests, boycotts and misfiring PR got the project swept under the rug and you drop-kicked into the sprawl. Smart as any human and twice as strong but you being you makes everyone morally queasy.”

Content: A class for the downtrodden uplift who’s ready for gorilla warfare.

Writing: Witty descriptions of class features with integrated mechanics. 

Art/Design: Sketch of a cyber-ape in a trench coat complements several distinct boxes of class details.

Usability: Class details are easily identifiable and navigable thanks to different font choices and fore/background color pairings.

Concept: “You died. Through means fair or foul, you departed this plane of existence, of that you are mightily certain. Then? Your cyber-attachments brought you back online. Or maybe it was some sort of nanoplague or something. In any case, you’re back. Except no one wants you back. You smell bad. You sound bad. You look very, very bad indeed. You’re way too deep into the Uncanny Valley to pass as one of the living. Sorry.”

Content: A class for those inhabiting the venn diagram overlap of “zombie lover,” “cyborg-curious,” and “body horror fanatic.”

Writing: Class detail descriptions are not for the faint of heart but are a must-read for anyone vaguely interested in the idea, with dark humor balancing the gore with levity. Mechanics are concise and complement the descriptions well.

Art/Design: Eye-searing colors faithfully reflect the unsettling nature of the class concept, and a sketch of an upcycled cyber-undead further brings the idea to (un)life. Text is sectioned into boxes set askew with distinct color and font choices that indicate different purposes.

Usability: Askew text angles support recognition of distinct purposes for each text box, inviting closer examination of enticing class possibilities. However, text is non-selectable and inaccessible to a screen reader.