Fairside Strategy is a library of narrative-rich games that expose kids aged 7-12 to morally complex but entertaining situations. It was designed under my leadership as Head of Design at BigFatPhoenix Interactive, the studio I co-founded.

As co-founder, I wore many hats. Creatively, the roles I fulfilled were Game Director, Narrative Director, and product vision holder.

It houses three styles of distinct games:

• Fairside Combat: Turn-based narrative-led combat in which players fight, but with the power of empathy (read more)

• Fairside Novels: Visual novels with meaningful storylines (read more)

• Fairside Strategy: Goal-based narrative games with no right answers (read more)

These game styles have had narrative reskins 40+ times to create the episodic games in the Fairside library. You can read more about each game style at the links above.

Here, I’d like to focus on a couple of other areas that I think made Fairside Stories a stand-out product.

Co-design With Players
Between 2022-23 we co-designed games with the players themselves. It was wild! We did deep creative sessions and their ideas directly influenced the narratives, characters, and backgrounds in the games and rewards features. These sessions were brilliant for both the kids and us, especially a month-long immersion with 550-odd Grade 3-6 kids in Repton Al Barsha, Dubai. Some of our best games came out of it, including the “Fairside at Sea” four-episode arc that involved pirates, dogs, lost tribes, and volcanos. I’ll add a playthrough of one of the episodes below. You can also read more about the codesign process on this blog, where co-conspirator Mourvi Sharma and I have started a design-kit for aspiring product makers.

World Building
All the games were set in the fictitious world of Fairside, whose IP I directed. I based the feel on the vibes of some of my favorite cartoons - The Fairly Oddparents, Kim Possible, and Gravity Falls. When it came to the spread of characters, I wanted to design them with an eye on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). I wanted kids of all kinds to play it and see themselves. That's why we have not just a nerdy Indian girl Janaki (like me), but black kids, Irish kids, kids in chairs, non-binary kids… and, funnily enough, one of the most popular characters was a cantankerous but kindly teacher. These were reviewed by sensitivity panels - folks like the people we represented. Changes were made based on their feedback - Janaki lost her bindi (an upper-caste mark in Hindu society), Vanessa stopped being a stereotype, and Maria's Spanish was corrected from European to Mexican. Some characters were removed till we could get them right. We're still working on the non-binary one!

Trait Framework
I also co-designed the underlying traits framework that drove the RPG-style elements of the character progression meta we meant to build, but ran out of money. The framework ties into the core of every game. It models SEL skills like kindness, empathy, integrity, and ethical decision-making.

But we consciously built a trait framework such that doing the “right” thing could be for the “wrong” reasons and vice-versa. It’s like lying to a friend to protect their feelings (wrong thing, right cause); or being brutally honest (right thing, but hurtful so maybe wrong). It was important for us to build games with no right answers. This is because

• We were building games, and no one wants to be preached at, and

• We think kids are talked down to, and enjoy moral ambiguity

Fairside Stories was launched in 2021. The most popular game in it, Detention Disaster, was co-designed with kids and has more than 50,000 plays around the world. The game is currently on production hiatus because we ran out of money, but you can still download and play it on Android and iOS. I’d love to hear what you think.