This is my second year participating in the Golden Cobra Challenge, “a friendly contest open to anyone interested in writing and playing freeform larp.” In 2023, my little game “The Secret Lives of Junk(kin) Drawers, Or, Why Marie Kondo Does(n’t) Spork Joy” earned an honorable mention. This year, I am so honored to report that my new game “LOSTFOUND” won an award; it is the “Game We Are Most Excited to Play for Serious Reasons.” According to the judges:
This thoughtful game does a great job of centering a person in their surroundings and is extremely playable anywhere one can find a small natural area. It prompts the player to think about the beauty of that space, and also makes one think about how terrifying that beauty can be. And despite all of that, it has a texting mechanic that introduces interaction and nuance into the framework of personal reflection at hand here.
This year’s theme was “nature.” At first, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do something about people’s relationship with nature. I kept coming back to the hippie-dippie idioms like” be one with nature” or “go back to nature.” LOSTFOUND, then, is about when that relationship with and to nature goes wrong. The tagline is “a light horror freeform larp for 4 to 8 people about being lost and alone in nature.” I was really struck by a statistic I found about the reasons why people get lost in national parks:
“What are the most comment reasons people got lost? Wandered off trail (41%); Bad weather (17%); Fell off trail (16%); Got separated from group (8%); Injury (7%); Darkness (6%); Loss or failure of equipment (5%); Other (1%).”
–Safe and Found,” SmokyMountains.com
I wanted to make a game about what happens when people “get back to nature” totally unprepared and overconfident in their survival skills. LOSTFOUND has a light horror version, the one I prefer, and a cozy version as well.
Thank you to the Golden Cobra community for this opportunity and recognition. I hope people get to play LOSTFOUND; I hope I hear about it, too. I look forward to next year’s theme and competition!