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Forbes
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
How A Religious Cult And Absurdist Humour Led To Quantum Witch
NikkiJay doesn't want you to know her real name. She doesn't want you to see her face. On social media, she appears only as a pixelated version of herself. Anonymity isn't an easy choice for her, it's the only choice. She's scared that if she reveals too much information about herself, someone will find her. 'I'd call the police if certain family members knocked on my door' she says. 'I'm trying to avoid the chaos it'd bring for the sake of my daughter.' It's not the typical conundrum a video games developer faces. To this day, Jay only speaks with one person in her family. The rest will have nothing to do with her. It all stems from her upbringing. She grew up in the north east of England in the eighties as a member of a religious group she describes as a 'cult'. Her experiences as a child have formed the basis for the characters and story in her upcoming adventure game, Quantum Witch. Both her mother and father's family have been involved in this particular religious circle (which Jay doesn't want to name) for two generations and so it was inevitable she would be too. It meant she couldn't have friends and was expected to dogmatically preach her beliefs to anyone she met. NikkiJay appears only in pixelated format online FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder 'I'd have to reject invites to Christmas and birthday parties before explaining my beliefs to other kids' Jay says. She's talking with me over Zoom from her home. Sitting in a dark room with a green sheet draped across the window behind her, Jay recalls being spat on at school by a group of girls. 'People would call me a 'religious freak' and a 'weirdo'' she explains. She found herself isolated socially. After school, Jay would be expected to study in preparation for religious meetings that were held multiple times a week. These gatherings were in a building she describes as a corporate meeting hall without windows. 'It was the most soulless, life sucking experience imaginable' Jay adds. Beginning with a prayer, meetings would last for two hours. The group's male leaders recited sermons from a stage about how everyone in the world is being misled, while a crowd watched on. Jay says they were deliberately delivered in a monotone voice to keep people 'dazed' and to prevent any critical thinking. 'The routine was so monotonous, you'd just go into zombie mode. 'Brainwashing' is a strong term, but here it's warranted' she says. These sermons filled Jay's head with traumatic ideas. '[They'd say] God is going to come and kill you if you don't do everything he says' she remembers. Members of the group were also forbidden from receiving certain medical procedures (again, she doesn't want to elaborate through fear of reprisal). 'If you needed an operation, you'd have to be prepared to just die' Jay says, adding that a friend passed away as a result of this ideology, believing that God would resurrect her. Despite the sore topic, Jay tries to remain upbeat throughout the conversation. She says that inappropriate humour is her coping mechanism. A Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer (Photo by) During this period of her life, Jay used video games as a form of escapism. At the age of eight she begged her parents for a ZX Spectrum and they eventually obliged. She then spent the summer holidays reading through the system's manual and learning how to programme her own text-based adventure games. 'As soon as I found I could escape into these worlds inside computers, I knew it'd be my life's special interest' she adds. But things were made worse for Jay at the age of 17 when she realised she was gay, something that was strictly prohibited in the religion's ideals. She recalls one preacher saying that it would be great when 'all the lesbians are dead' in a sermon. Terrified, she didn't reveal her sexuality until she was 19. It proved to be a dramatic turning point in her life. It led to an argument with her family. Devastated, she was forced to flee her home and was exiled from the 'cult'. With no money, Jay became homeless. She recalls being forced to use a hacksaw just to open a tin of tuna, the only edible item she possessed. 'You're taught [by the religion] not to invest in the outside world so when you're forced into this position, you have no idea where you're going or how to eat' she says. No-one in her family would answer the phone to her. Eventually Jay understood that she would need to build a life of her own. A Saturday job at a video games store popped up and she began making friends for the first time. It led to couch surfing before a job in web development and her own apartment came along. Quantum Witch is about making your own choices 'That's a strong theme in Quantum Witch' explains Jay. 'Towards the end it becomes an issue of choice and agency, taking control of your own actions and not being led by the whim of others' she adds. Quantum Witch is a 2D pixelated adventure game set in the realm of Hus. Players take on the role of Ren as she discovers something is awry in her idyllic life. There's fetch quests and narrative decisions to make inspired by the ZX Spectrum's Dizzy series (1987) and LucasArts games such as Day of the Tentacle (1993). The game started out as a novel but Jay found writing a book to be too difficult. 'I turned a few of my experiences into metaphors and short stories, but I couldn't string them together into something cohesive with a through line and a strong narrative' she says. Although Jay has developed Quantum Witch alone, she received narrative input from Bafta award winning writer, Paul Rose and journalist, Stephanie Sterling - both are credited as writers on the game's end credits. Other inspirations include the comedy TV show Red Dwarf, the works of author Douglas Adams (The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and fourth-wall breaking films such as Deadpool (2016). 'I wanted to do something that was retro looking but also cartoonish that could go from happy and jolly to quite dark quickly' Jay explains. She now lives with her wife, daughter and cat and says she has been able to separate herself from the oppressive way of living she grew up with, although she concedes it took her decades to do so. Some of the memories she conjured while making Quantum Witch are still difficult to remember, however she now has a fresh perspective on her past. 'Instead of looking at [my past] and playing it out as a tragedy, I wanted it to be an absurdist comedy. I took that cult background and created characters from it that just amplified the ridiculousness of it. It really helped me. If you can laugh at something, it takes away it's power' she says. Quantum Witch is available on PC from June 24
Newsweek
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
INTERVIEW: Nikki Jay Escaped a Cult — Now She's Making a Game About It
Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors Quantum Witch developer Nikki Jay grew up in a cult. It was a heavily religious environment, with strict rules and harsh teachings. Most medical assistance was shunned, and there were constant lectures about the end of the world, how she was never good enough, and that God was going to kill her and all her loved ones in horrible ways. Nothing was more abhorrent to the cult, though, than the concept of homosexuality, and that was a problem for Nikki, who realised she was attracted to women at a young age. "I knew that I liked girls from the age of 8," Nikki tells me. "I distinctly remember, at the end of term at school, teachers brought in Labyrinth for us to watch. I saw Jennifer Connelly, and I saw David Bowie, and I knew who I preferred." The religious group's disposition on homosexuality, combined with its total ban on outside interaction – friends outside of the group were considered to be "controlled by the devil" – and limitations on LGBT+ discussion in public life in the UK throughout the 80's and 90's, meant that Nikki was isolated and alone. Her escape throughout these difficult times was video games, where she fell in love with games like Chrono Trigger, which offered her something new: an opportunity to choose her own path. "I remember playing through Chrono Trigger for the first time, and I've got a choice," Nikki recalls. "I can be enemies with this guy or be friends with him. And the ending is different, my party is different, my abilities are different depending on that choice. I love that so much." That feeling of choice is something that Nikki's tried to capture in her own game, Quantum Witch, which is in the final stages of development now. Quantum Witch is a narrative adventure game with light platforming elements, and it's one of the most choice-heavy games I've ever seen. Everything you do – or just as importantly, everything you choose not to do – has an impact on the story, the options available to you later, and the ending. In Nikki's own words, she's probably gone a little overboard with it — there are five endings to the main story, four endings to one of the game's chapters, and at least two endings for each NPC in the game. A screenshot from Quantum Witch showing main character Ren talking to an ensnared woman and declaring there must be another way. A screenshot from Quantum Witch showing main character Ren talking to an ensnared woman and declaring there must be another way. Nikki Jay These choices come up in every aspect of the game, and shape your journey through the world Nikki created. "A choice you made early in the game will color the choices that you have available to you later in the game, because the choices you make not only affect the story, they affect the character development of the main character," Nikki explains. "By choosing to go with the flow with a certain group, that means she's going to have less confrontational options available to her going forwards — fewer options in one way, but more options in another. "It's incredibly complex, but from a player point of view, you can play it and go, 'oh, that was the story, I got my story' and it's not really until you look at the achievements and go 'but I only got half the achievements,' and then you might talk to a friend who goes 'well, that's not the story I got.'" It's all made possible by a custom scripting language – and a lot of spreadsheets – that Nikki made herself. Initially, development on Quantum Witch started in Javascript, but after the realization that it would unnecessarily lock her out of a potential console release in the future, she decided to make the switch to the C programming language. The only problem was that she didn't actually know C, so she gave herself two weeks to learn it, and another week to implement her custom scripting language, dubbed Witch Script. It turns simple text scripts into game material, effectively allowing her to implement and change content at a rapid pace. After our conversation, Nikki realized there were a few changes she wanted to make, adding a few more choices for players to pick, and it was implemented in just a few minutes. The heavy focus on choice, and the comedic lens through which it's presented, is in part a coping mechanism for Nikki. Growing up, she didn't have a lot of choice, and while she was technically free to leave, it came at a big cost. It's something she's poked fun at in Quantum Witch, where a cult-like group allows main character Ren to leave after a meeting — but only by pushing through the "Fine Mesh of Separation," a metal net that would effectively kill anyone attempting to leave. This, Nikki says, is essentially a comedic twist on what it was like when she left. She was free to leave the group, but it meant giving up her life as she knew it. "If you leave, you give up your life, it was a big part of that group," Nikki says. "When I left, I lost my entire social structure, because you're not allowed friends outside of the group. And if you leave, you are completely shunned. So no friends, I ended up homeless because I had no support structure. "So I thought I'd make a silly joke about it. You can leave anytime you want, and you're totally free to leave... by being pushed through this fine metal mesh — but it's your choice to do that. If I didn't laugh about it, I would just cry about it, so that's how I cope." These days, she's in a much better place. She has a job and a family, a lovely wife and child, and she's had the opportunity to make Quantum Witch, in the hopes that others can connect with her experiences and know that they're not alone. She's put her heart and soul into this game, and it shows — it's not the prettiest game I've ever played, and mechanically might be a bit on the simple side, but it's earnest and full of personality, in a way that so few games are after they've been sanded down for commercial interest. Despite that, Nikki is very aware that it won't be for everyone, and she'll probably get backlash and abuse for it. Social media has emboldened some of the worst parts of society to push back against anything featuring queer characters and experiences, labeling them "woke," and that often comes with a lot of hatred directed at the developers behind these games. Women get the worst of it, and queer women especially so, but Nikki isn't letting that stop her from sharing her experiences. "I'm fine if there's a lot of people who hate the game, and I know that there will be," she admits. "But I know that there'll be an audience that goes 'yeah, I see myself in this' and love it. I'm not taking anything away by making this game, I'm expanding the audience of games. "Simply existing as a female game dev is an act of defiance. We're told 'stop messing about in our games, go make your own games,' so we did and they said 'no, don't make games like that, you're doing it wrong.' We're here, we're in this space. If you don't like what we do, it's not for you." Quantum Witch is still a few weeks out from releasing. Nikki is hard at work polishing it and tying up any loose ends, and provided there aren't any snags along the way, it's scheduled to be released on Steam on June 24, 2025. What happens after it releases is anyone's guess – Nikki says she'd love it to do well and get the opportunity to do a sequel – but actually finishing a game is a success in itself, and she's days away from doing exactly that. Nikki says she's not very good at promotion – in part because she struggles to talk about herself and her creations after years of being told not to – but she encourages everyone to wishlist Quantum Witch on Steam and give it a go when it's released. Having played a small slice of the game's opening, I think there's a lot to love, and anyone who's been through difficult experiences like Nikki has will find a lot that resonates with them. "A lot of the issues I had, which are represented in the story, were about being told that anything you do is not worth boasting about. If you said that you've done something good, that's prideful and boastful, and you mustn't do that, because all glory must go to God," Nikki explains. "So it's really difficult for me to say 'please go and tell everyone that Quantum Witch is extremely exciting and wonderful, and you must go wishlist it now,' because there's still that oppression there saying 'you're not allowed to do that.' "But if people like games where they start off in a living, breathing world, not really told what to do but to go discover the story, and the way you discover it will actually shape the story, and when you play through it again you get a different story, and it's extremely queer. If that appeals to people, please go wishlist it."
