artist's statement
In an era of popular dress up games, these games still appear to favor skinny white fashion and refuse to allow more masculine styles to be fun, colorful, and unique. Manicured Metal started as a game focusing on dress up and body modification, and it evolved into a game about how we think about our daily survival, how we present ourselves for consumption, and community. The world of Manicured Metal is riddled with systemic problems set in a future of sentient robots and a variety of body modifications available to anyone. Our protagonist, Desiree, starts the game in a newly modified body, and as players, we get to watch as she tries to fight with what she wants to wear and what will earn her money.
This game made me realize just how often I overscope, but who wouldn't when designing a dress up game! There's a never ending list of things I cut and redid, but at the end of the day, I'm happy that Desiree starts to bloom, slowly, into how they wish to present in their new body. It's been funny working on this as I also have been slowly thinking more about how I dress and inching slowly towards wanting to be more masculine. Clothes and, more importantly, hair have such an important effect on how we view ourselves, so I wanted to imagine a future where gender expression can mean something deeper for everyone while also exploring the dangers of society placing people in gendered boxes with only white femininity and white masculinity in mind.
Geneva/Styx Heyward
Geneva/Styx Heyward (they/them) is a black, nonbinary game developer born and raised in New York. They're a wearer of many hats when developing games and they focus on creating the queer games they wish existed when they were a little budding lesbian. They're also an educator interested in getting youth interested in creating interactive art with radical joy in mind. They grew up in a family of nerds and have had a love for sci-fi and all things otherworldly ever since.
last updated: Tue Jan 06 2026 17:01:28 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)