Uma Breakdown and Belladonna Paloma
Surface of Scum, A Necrotic Character Generator (2022)
About this work
Surface of Scum: A Necrotic Character Generator is a hyper-lo-fi digital storytelling tool that forms part of Breakdown and Paloma’s current video-game project The Well of Sickness Shimmering.
Surface of Scum takes the start of a role playing game where the player makes choices and rolls dice to build their character, and expands this into an experience about the unstable self, identifying as both collaborative process and compost heap. The game references potent Medieval holy site St Anne’s wood and holy well in Bristol, and the healing folk magic of clootie wells more broadly.
umabreakdown.com
sammypaloma.com
Surface of Scum was made using Bitsy (by Adam Le Doux), with these additional hacks: Mixsy by Ruin, Bitsy audio hack by Mark Wonnacott, Custom Key Handler by Sean S. LeBlanc.
Images made using PIXILART, then converted into Bitsy rooms using this tool: https://hideous-cave-goblin.
Special thanks to the Bitsy Discord community for advice and troubleshooting.
Music made using BeepBox.
Made with kind support from MAYK, and Bristol + Bath Creative R+D via the Trailblazer Fund.