A new wave of Aboriginal Australian game developers is turning to video games as a powerful medium for sharing First Nations culture, stories and sovereignty with players around the world — and the results are as darkly surreal as they are culturally significant.
From Blockbuster Shooters to Dreamtime Stories
Wankanurri man Arthur Ah Chee is no stranger to the games industry. After working on the globally recognised Call of Duty franchise, he founded Cerulean Creative Studios in South Australia with a clear new mission: to elevate First Nations stories and artists on a global stage.
His current project, Cheeky Boy, is being developed alongside Narungga and Kaurna theatre-maker Jacob Boehme and draws directly from the Narungga Dreaming. The story follows a mischievous child — described by Ah Chee as a kind of Dennis the Menace figure — who is cast out by his community, transformed into a dingo by a wind spirit, and then hopelessly led astray in pursuit of a possum. Ah Chee describes its visual tone as darker and Tim Burton-esque.
While the game is designed to be fun and accessible for school-age Australians, its shadowy undertones are intended to resonate far beyond local audiences. Ah Chee works closely with community elders throughout the project's development.
"We have a lot of dark stories in Aboriginal culture where it transitions very well into the global storytelling space," he says.
White Ibis, Big Ideas: Breaking Down Barriers Through Anthropomorphism
Wiradjuri game-maker Ben Armstrong is taking a different but equally inventive approach with his latest project, Buru and The Old People. The game's unlikely hero, Buru the white ibis, started life as one of Armstrong's Dungeons & Dragons characters, later became a short story in a published anthology, and has now evolved into a full narrative game that reimagines Indigenous communities through anthropomorphic animal characters.
The decision to use animal characters was a deliberate strategy to sidestep a persistent challenge facing Aboriginal Australian creative works — the risk of being pigeonholed into a narrow perceived market.
"The goal was to break down the barrier of people consuming our stories and looking at them purely as black," Armstrong explains, citing animated features like Zootopia as an inspiration. His ambition, he says, is to draw audiences in with something charming and accessible, then confront them with a fully realised Indigenous story.
Despite its colourful cast, Buru and The Old People tackles weighty questions around values, conflict and sovereignty — perspectives Armstrong notes that many non-Indigenous Australians are often reluctant to engage with without extensive cultural consultation. The game's world is not without humour, either: players will encounter seagulls dripping in gaudy jewellery and wide-brimmed hats, apparently inspired by a certain kind of ostentatious Sydney beach suburb.
"If I was to replace every character in this game with humans, it would be the same story. But it allows us to have a little bit more fun too," Armstrong says.
Armstrong came to game development from a background in the tech industry and has since become an award-winning advocate for First Nations game developers.
Connecting Country and Code
Also working at this intersection of culture and technology is Kat Gledhill-Tucker, a Noongar creative technologist and game developer whose current untitled project — working title Project Worl — draws on the six Noongar seasons. Gledhill-Tucker describes her approach as deliberately "anti-disciplinary," actively pushing against western reference points and leveraging gaming's unique capacity to build empathy and hold players' attention.
"I think there's an opportunity to tell a story about the connection between body and country," she says, pointing to the medium's potential as a vehicle for cultural education and connection that traditional storytelling formats cannot easily replicate.
Together, these creators represent a growing movement using games as a cultural force — one that is beginning to attract serious attention both locally and internationally.
