I WAS HERE
I WAS HERE is a bittersweet story about loving and letting go. It is a first-person narrative game where players get an intimate look into the consciousness of Skye Lockwood, a young woman taking a retrospective look into her memories of her high school relationship with her roommate at their boarding school Greybrook Academy. Players walk through Skye's dorm room and interact with the various objects scattered around the room. Doing so, they recover short audio scenes depicting memories attached to Skye and her girlfriend Olivia's possessions in the room.
About the Game
Developer: Kate Smith
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Platform: PC/Mac/Linux
Release Date: 05/19/2018
Play here:
https://katesmith.itch.io/i-was-here
About the Developer
Kate Smith is a game developer from Portland, Oregon and currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from the NYU Game Center at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Game Design. Now she works as the lead interactive ad developer at a Craftsman+ and as an adjunct instructor teaching programming at the NYU Game Center. Her game I WAS HERE, which she created as her capstone project at NYU, won the iThrive Games Find the Kind Prize at IndieCade 2018 for exemplifying themes of kindness and empathy in games.
Trailer
Gameplay Video
Screenshots
Logos (Dark and light versions)
Press
NO SPANDEX SATURDAY: IndieCade 2018’s Five Best Experiences
"Little did I know, I Was Here, would turn out to be one of the most well written and effective uses of the [walking simulator] genre."
"...it’s the little details that set I Was Here apart from its peers such as Gone Home. The voice work is incredibly professional level recorded and implemented, the developer treats this as performance over a mechanical element."
--Davey Nieves, Comics Beat
"I WAS HERE is a first person narrative experience that takes a touching look at a meaningful, but shortlived relationship between two high school girls who fell in love."
--Calum Fraser, Free Game Planet
Review: I Was Here – Gone to College -- Game Luster
"The game’s ending is brilliant in how universal it is. It’s a tale that leaves you with mixed emotions. Their intense relationship is wholesome. It has the kind of on-screen (or perhaps on-speaker?) chemistry you can’t help but smile at. But with the story ending in the two splitting up, it turns into something so invariably human. The emptiness of longing for the bliss someone else made you feel is made even more hollow by knowing you’ll never see them again."
--Robert Scarpinito, Game Luster
Awards/Honors
IndieCade 2018 Official Selection and Awardee
iThrive Games Find the Kind Prize -- IndieCade 2018
Permissions
I hereby grant permission to press to use any and all media on this page, including but not limited to images, video, audio, and text at their own risk.
Credits
I WAS HERE was developed as a solo project by Kate Smith. Contributing works have been credited as follows:
Additional 3D Modeling -- Caitlin Falls
Additional Artwork -- Rebecca Smith, Joseph Boquiren, Kira Smith
Music Licensing Manager -- Elizabeth Castaño
Voiceover Cast:
Skye: Kate Smith
Olivia: Abigail Wahl