Anne Zarnecke
WASD Anne Zarnecke

I have been pretty quiet in the last couple of months after announcing the start of my internship at Mad About Pandas. A lot has happened during that time:

  • I have started doing interviews for the Womenize! Wednesday Weekly Featurette, a series where influential women from the games and tech industry are being highlighted every week.
  • I’ve written several reviews for Gamereactor such as Genesis: Alpha OneMetro Exodus (which I really enjoyed), The Occupation, as well as Trüberbrook.
  • Mad About Pandas has won ”best childrens game” at the Deutscher Computerspielpreis with Laika! I wasn’t involved in the project, but still very exciting.
  • I wrote my first article for the GAIN Magazine about coziness in games, a topic that is very dear to my heart. In the article I write about games like the Animal Crossing Franchise or Firewatch and why they evoke such a cozy feeling when playing. I was being inspired by this very well written report about the mechanics behind coziness. The Gain Magazine is a beautifully designed print magazine, you can buy the newest edition here
  • I’ve started working as a game design working student at Mad About Pandas after finishing my internship. I am back to university (the last semester before my bachelor thesis!) but still put a lot of time into the design process for Hitchhiker. I have also planned to start doing some Twitter PR for the game, which unexpectedly is way harder than I thought.

I will try to be way more active on this blog than I was before and am currently updating some of the pages. The production of Hitchhiker takes up a lot of my freetime (which I love) but that of course leaves me with less time for other stuff I’ve planned on doing. I am very happy with how the game is coming together, hopefully we have some new stuff to share very soon!