CHEST SIMULATOR (2025-)

A hybrid game by Teddy Max Pozo

The game uses familiar tools from queer and trans game design, such as:

• Makey Makey

• Bitsy game maker

• Electric Zine Maker

• hybrid game design

• Twine 2 (digital edition only)

In particular, the piece was inspired by empathy machine (mattie brice, 2016), and its use of Makey Makey to transform the artist’s body into a video game controller.

Process:

• 2022-2023: Sculpture created at The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY, with guidance from Katherine Tholl

• Summer 2023: ~top surgery~ 🗡🗡 in Thousand Oaks, CA

• Fall 2023: submitted documentation of work in progress to the Queerness and Games Jam Symposium

• Spring 2024: “Eulogy for Old Friends” poem presented at Communion: Queer & Trans Memorial and Mourning, season 3

• Winter 2024-25: poetic visual novel built using Bitsy game maker

• February 2025: first showing of CHEST SIMULATOR in Silver Plated Secrets, curated by Blue Reinhard and Cognitive Dissonance Collective, at MorYork in Los Angeles

Showings of CHEST SIMULATOR:

• May 2025: other others // rehearsals in the skin, curated by Touch Praxis at Human Resources Gallery LA

• October 2025: The Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon 2025), Montréal, QC

• November 2025: Writing Queer/Trans Memorial, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

• April 2026: Haptics for Inclusion, ASU Narrative and Emerging Media, Los Angeles, CA