Year: 2014

Creator: Naomi Clark

Country: United States

Genre: 2-Player Co-op

Platform: Table-top

Image of Consentacle provided by Naomi Clark

In Consentacle is a table-top, two player cooperative card game created by Naomi Clark. It first debuted in 2014 at No Quarter, an annual game exhibition at the NYU Game Center in New York. The game also won the 2015 Indiecade’s “Best Impact of the Year” award. Following a hugely successful (and still ongoing, donate if you’d like a copy!) Kickstarter campaign in fall 2017 the game will finally be produced for broader release.

According to the Kickstarter page, “Consentacle is a game where you and a partner help a tentacled alien and a curious human have a mutually satisfying romantic encounter.” It is a game that is, as Riley MacLeod (2015) writes, “a radical departure from many other games about sex and intimacy—an exploration rather than an effort to define or explain.” This article by Evan Narcisse describes the play experience is much more detail. Krystle Wong interviewed Clark about the design process for the game for A MAZE magazine, followed by a second interview live at the A MAZE conference. Clark’s artistic statement about the game can be found the Indiecade page for the game. Colleen Macklin and John Sharp’s textbook Games, Design and Play uses Consentacle as a case study on how design values are put into practice by game designers, exploring Clark’s goals and intentions.

LGBTQ references in this game: Queer Game/Narrative, Actions (queer romantic encounter)

References

Clark, N. (2017, September 7). Consentacle: A card game of Human-Alien Intimacy. Kickstarter.com. Retrieved from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/990619951/consentacle-a-card-game-of-human-alien-intimacy/updates

Clark, N. (2014, September 24). Consentacle: How do I get some? Deadpixel.co. Retrieved from http://deadpixel.co/2014/09/consentacle-how-do-i-get-some/

Macklin, Colleen and John Sharp. (2016, June 13). Games, Design and Play. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley Professional.

MacLeod, R. (2015, November 4) Consentacle: Tangles with romance. Unwinnable.com. Retrieved from https://unwinnable.com/2015/11/04/consentacle-tangles-with-romance/

Narcisse, E. (2014, September 24). Tentacle alien sex card game isn’t as perverted as you think. Kotaku. Retrieved from https://kotaku.com/tentacle-alien-sex-card-game-isnt-as-perverted-as-youd-1638675233

Wong, Krystle. (2015, May 5). Consentacle: A Sex Game or a Game About Sex? A MAZE. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/independenceamazing/docs/a-maze-mag-de-online/12

Wong, Krystle and Naomi Clark. (2016, April 22). A MAZE Masterclass: Naomi Clark in Conversation with Krystle Wong. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_OS_b9lg-w

(2014). No Quarter Exhibition. NYU Game Center. Retrieved from http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/no-quarter-exhibition/

(2014). Consentacle. Boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved from https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/166976/consentacle

(n.d.). Consentacle. Indiecade. Retrieved from http://www.indiecade.com/games/selected/consentacle