New YouTube channel!
Wyrdren Games finally has a YouTube channel! We are starting with a new series of interview style videos to show you the community what we have been doing behind the scenes. Our first video in the series is a chat with our Founder and Director Sally Sheppard asking questions that you the players submitted via TikTok and Instagram. Future videos will cover a wide range of topics, including who is the team at Wyrdren, what goes into running/making a gaming company, and discussing diversity in gaming.
Let us know what you think and what other videos you’d like us to make in the comments! Be sure to check out our new YouTube channel as well, where you’ll find all our upcoming videos. Thank you for watching, and remember to keep playing, and stay “Wyrd”!
Blog post written by Annie Durwood
Community and Relationships Manager at Wyrdren Games
History of Wyrdren
Since 2020, Wyrdren Games has been working on our first title Spellbound: The Magic Within. We are now eagerly growing and expanding. The journey of how has been somewhat of a whirlwind, so to help, we’ve created this timeline to show you how we got here and what we’ve been up to along the way.
This has been an incredible journey for us, we hope you’ve enjoyed this timeline and that it helps catch you up on what we’ve been doing over the past year and a half. We at Wyrdren are so excited for the next year and all the things to come. We can’t wait to show you more of our journey along the way as we grow and expand our team.
Blog post written by Annie Durwood
Community and Relationships Manager at Wyrdren Games
Video Presentation: A video was created for a demo day presentation about indie game studios participating in the Games London Accelerator
Wyrdren Games 2021 Round Up.
This video was created for a demo day presentation to industry, investors and developers about indie game studios participating in the Games London Accelerator. Featuring Wyrdren Games Founder and solo developer Sally Sheppard, it's a peak into what the studio has been up to in it's first year creating video games. The interview portions of the video where shot between September and December 2021. Showing Wyrdren’s journey to EGX London 2021 and leading up to the release year of Spellbound: The Magic Within in 2022.
On the origin of Wyrdren.
“Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird.”
“Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird.”
When starting Wyrdren I knew I wanted a name that would reflect the types of games we would be creating. I am super passionate about storytelling; I believe it is one of the quintessential factors that make us human. Stories have been an integral part of our survival as a species. At the dawn of spoken word, we passed essential information to one another to share what we had learned. My favourite games have always had epic stories at the centre of them, I have often thought of games as utilising the best parts of books and movies and smashing them together, with the player at the centre of the action. I wanted to make games that I myself would love to play – Narrative focused, Choices to be made and multiple outcomes. Designing games where the player could oversee the outcome of the story was paramount to me when forming Wyrdren.
The Wyrd has origins in Norse Mythology, later Roman and Greek. It is one of the three ‘Fates’ (Norn’s, Weird Sisters, Valkyries), they are often represented as three weavers, weaving the threads of life: Past, Present and Future. This concept was important to me as a woman starting a Game Studio in a male dominated industry, the Norn’s are powerful female figures, and I found them inspiring. It also relates directly to the style of games we are making, games in which the player would follow the threads of the story, with multiple paths to take and choices to make. They would be the weavers of their own destiny.
The etymology of the word Weird can be traced back to the word Wyrd. This felt symbolic as the games I wanted to make where games that were missing when I was growing up playing games. I longed for games that had diverse representation and where LGBTQIA+ inclusive when I was younger. I often felt on the fringe and ‘weird’ for the games I enjoyed. I wanted games that really represented the people playing them. The wonderful communities that for too long had to play games with the default white, male characters. It felt poetic when choosing a name that we would get to include something that would represent the people we were creating for.
Finally I settled on Wyrd ∙ ren. Adding the ‘ren’ to the end to represent the family and community that I hoped to create with this company. ‘ren’ and ‘en’ are added to words to pluralise them, like brethren, children and women. My intention is to create a community of diverse gamers who enjoy inclusive narrative games with player driven choices at the heart of them. I also hope to expand the team and create more games in the future – I hope that everyone who works with for us and with us can bring their own stories and experiences to the table and help make Wyrdren the best company it can be. I hope Wyrdren can eventually offer opportunities to those who have the same passion for storytelling and game design that are often overlooked by the industry.
Blog post written by Sally Sheppard
Creative Director at Wyrdren Games