Esther Alter started out making games like Neocolonialism and No Pineapple Left Behind, which she now describes as “anti-fun.” But her newest game PRO?EMON is unashemedly fun, in addition to being a thoughtful experiment in how far we can push procedural generation, and in what human-machine collaborations can looks like.

Here Esther talks about PRO?EMON in terms of its inspirations, its tech, and how it fits into her broader artistic practice?which spans tabletop RPGs, non-game technical experiments and tools, and short-form fiction (much of it profoundly and unmistakably Jewish).

PRO?EMON: You Must Catch Them is out now on Itch.io and Steam.
You can follow Esther on Twitter, and find a whole bunch of her work on her website.

———
• The secondary antagonists who want to liberate Pok?mon (those jerks) are Team Plasma from Pok?mon Black and White (on the DS).

• It’s true enough that you wouldn’t have read about MissingNo. in Nintendo Power at the time?though a year later, the hundredth issue did cover the Minus World in Super Mario Bros (a glitch that was then about a decade old).

• Here’s Esther’s talk about the life and death and slippery definiton of the indie game.

• Here’s the collectable card game version of Pro?emon.

• And here are Other Covenants and “Cultureship.”
———

?All The People Say (Season 5)? by Carpe Demon.
Some (genuinely procedural!) music from PRO?EMON: You Must Catch Them by Esther Alter.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.