Demonised: The Islandmagee Witches (Video Game Demo)

Demonised: The Islandmagee Witches is a serious game that explores Northern Ireland's dark heritage. Players are invited to step back to the year 1711 to explore the trial of the Islandmagee witches, on of Ireland’s last witch trial. Through gamification, Demonised allows players to rediscover the importance of the trial of eight women and one man at Carrickfergus Assize court in 1711, how it was represented and remembered, and how people can derive meaning from these traumatic historical events through a new lens. The use of gaming technology will take the ‘hidden’ dark heritage of the Islandmagee witch trial to wider audiences and engage with key themes of diversity, social exclusion, and gender-based violence. The Islandmagee “witches” were poor, marginalised people with a range of disabilities and this serious game aims to frame their stories alongside morality metres, using environmental storytelling and procedural exploration to reinforce and revisit current historical explorations of the trial. It allows the user to become a co-producer in historical recreation. Balancing engaging gameplay, gamification and history, this “serious” game has been co-developed with researchers and experts from other disciplines (History and Cinematic Art [horror]) to provide accuracy and context to gameplay elements. The player experience is consequently shaped by game design and its obligation to fulfill its primary goal of education through accurate content, choices, player methods and game scenarios.

Our serious game is part of a broader collaborative public history initiative displayed at Carrickfergus Museum, blending historical retellings, and creative media to create numerous outputs: a Virtual Reality application; an animated film; a graphic novel; a play; digitised original trial documents and a bespoke musical score (for these, see project website w1711.org).