There’s one game Don’t Nod narrative designer Nina Freeman won’t ever uninstall from her PC, because it’s banned on Steam: ‘It’s tragic, because everyone should play this game’

Publishers of the ’90s loved a boxed video game collection, which is why Nina Freeman’s earliest PC gaming memory is playing Rodent’s Revenge. Released in 1991 as part of Microsoft Entertainment Pack 2 Rodent’s Revenge was about a mouse pushing blocks around to trap cats. “I didn’t have a computer until I was 10, so I think I played this on my friend’s computer, or at school or the library,” says Freeman, a freelance game developer who has worked with developers like Fullbright and Don’t Nod Montreal. “I don’t remember how it works, but I remember playing it … it was sort of like a puzzle horror game, if you will.”

Freeman gained prominence in the games industry for her autobiographical video games such as Cibele and Last Call, exploring subjects like relationships and sexuality. She has also worked as a level designer on the first-person narrative adventures Tacoma and Open Roads, and was a writer and principal narrative designer on Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Freeman is currently working on a new, unannounced project with Don’t Nod, as well as on an indie horror game called Size Zero with her husband and fellow game designer Jake Jeffries. “Progress is slow as a snail, but technically I have that on the back burner,” she says.

Freeman took a break from narrative design to guide me through the branching pathways of her PC and Steam Deck. Prepare yourself for a tale of deadly rollercoasters, forbidden Steam games, and one of the most ambitious visual novels in existence.

What game are you currently playing?

I am playing Angeline Era. It was one of the grand prize finalists at the IGF this year. I will say, disclaimer, the devs are friends of mine from way back. We started in the industry around the same time and knew each other when I lived in New York City. Melos and Marina, they’re amazing and I’ve actually worked with both of them.

I always get excited when they release a new game, because I feel like they’re some of the most prolific indie game developers out there. They’ve made so many games, and the scope of these games is big. They are really ambitious.

Melos and Marina have their own unique voice as game developers, and yet their games are often drawing on and inspired by mechanics you’re familiar with. Anodyne, their first game, felt like this Zelda-like game. You’re playing it and feeling that, but then it blossoms into its own thing … they take them in wild directions to the point where you can see the influence, but there’s so much more to it than that it’s mind-blowing.

And I’m saying that mechanically. Narratively, also, their stories are always really profound and interesting. You don’t get spoon fed the story. You have to work for it in a way that’s satisfying. They’re good at telling stories that are subtle and end up feeling profound and human, while often being in a fantasy setting.

What was the previous game you played, and is it still installed?

So I’ve been playing Angeline Era on Steam Deck, and it’s beautiful on Steam Deck … the last game I finished on the Steam Deck was Scarlet Hollow, and it is still installed. It’s a visual novel by Black Tabby Games, the incredible devs behind Slay the Princess.

I have to say that Scarlet Hollow is a masterpiece, and as a narrative designer, it’s the kind of game that I feel very nerdy about because it definitely has the most complex branching structure I’ve maybe ever played in a game. I honestly can’t think of anything that compares to it, except for maybe Christine Love’s work.

[It’s] the kind of game where you’re playing and there’s branching stuff, and you can tell when your choices are going to make a branch. But then there’s also a lot of variation that maybe you don’t notice the first time you play, in little lines and little scenes that varies up the moment to moment of the game, which I really appreciate. We tried to do as much of that as we could in Lost Records. There’s a lot of work that I put into subtle branching throughout scenes, where you might not notice it until a second playthrough.

Silent Hill F does a lot of this as well, which is another game I’m loving. Not on PC, but I’m just bringing it up as I feel this kind of branching narrative design with lots of subtle differences using all the player choices is becoming more of a thing.

What is the oldest game (by release date) currently installed on your PC?

Rollercoaster Tycoon Deluxe. This is not what I expected. Evidently it came out March 31, 1999.

I’m actually glad it’s this game, because I did play a lot of Rollercoaster Tycoon as a kid, and I think that’s probably why I picked it up as an adult in a sale or something, because I was feeling nostalgic.

As a kid, I built never ending rollercoasters. Rollercoaster Tycoon reminds me of The Sims in a way, where it tempts you to put the characters in danger, where you make really dangerous coasters just to see what happens. I remember doing that and just being very amused as a kid, similar to how I would play The Sims, and you would make a pool and delete the staircase to leave. I know I’m not the only little freak that did that.

The first game I actually bought on Steam was Magicka. That’s a throwback … I must have been a freshman in college, and that was the first time in my life I ever discovered what an indie game was, and I remember playing Flower and Magicka and a couple of other games.

It was one of those games I played because I had some friends that were also playing it, and they wanted to play co-op together. So I’ve definitely, my whole career, had a love for local or remote co-op games.

What is the highest number of hours you have in any given game, according to Steam?

This is the first one I wanted to look up, because I’m sure everyone’s like “What’s my embarrassing [number]?”. Well, maybe not everyone has this reaction. I’m having this reaction because my most played game is Dota 2 by magnitudes.

I’ll tell you my number. Hours played, 2,101. My second-place game is Divinity: Original Sin 2, at only 241. I will say, though, that I played a lot of Overwatch before it was on Steam. And Final Fantasy 11, when I was a teenager, I was a seriously hardcore player of that game.

I started playing [Dota 2] in my early relationship with my now-husband, who also loves Dota 2. When he and I met, I was starting to fall off Overwatch, which I really loved, and I was looking for a new game to fill that competitive space in my free time. And Jake, also a game developer who I make games with, he was like, ‘Oh, I’ll teach you how to play Dota 2 if you’re curious.’

So Jake and I, as a couple, have played a lot of Dota 2. It’s almost been a date night game for a really long time until I had a kid, and now we don’t have any time to play it.

It has the most insane mechanical depth of maybe any game I’ve ever played, and I just love that aspect of it, like that complexity and how it all works together. Also side note, I think of Dota almost as like a folk game within digital games, because it came from a player-made space, and then obviously Valve took over and made it what it is now. But it has this almost folk game history, so I am just fascinated by Dota and its whole lifespan.

What game will you never, ever uninstall?

Devotion, by Red Candle Games.

The backstory is what people always say first, but before I say it, it is one of my probably top five favourite games of all time. One of the best horror games ever made, in my opinion. It’s a game about a father, a family unit with a focus on the father and his relationship with his daughter, who is ill, and the family struggle that happens around this situation and his relationship to religion.

It’s so good, but the big-real life story of this game is that, when it came out, it was swiftly banned on Steam because there was a meme in it, that evidently was shipped by mistake, about the Chinese president, so it was very quickly banned. And it’s tragic because everyone should play this game.

So I’ll never remove it from my Steam library, because I’m probably one of the few people that even has it in their Steam library.

What’s a piece of non-gaming software installed on your PC that you simply couldn’t live without?

I’m not much of an apps user, but I do heavily rely on OBS because I am a game developer, but I also stream on Twitch, so I think probably OBS is the thing I use the most outside of my work stuff …. I use [it] a ton because of my stream, recording gameplay footage and whatnot. It’s a big part of my setup.

How tidy is your desktop screen?

It’s pretty tidy. I keep it clean. I have a two-monitor set up. I have my Sticky Note on one side, with my wallpaper of Auron from Final Fantasy 10. My main monitor is a wallpaper of one of my dogs, and I only have three columns of shortcuts. I regularly move stuff to one of my external hard drives, so I think I’m pretty organised, but I will say my external hard drives are a mess.

I have to keep my desktop clean because I stream, and sometimes my desktop will shop up on stream if I’m trying to show people something, so I can’t have private NDA stuff on my desktop ever. That’s a big deal. So I have to keep it clean for that reason.