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Jeeyon Shim

Jeeyon Shim is a second generation Korean American game designer and writer. A former outdoor educator, her body of work is strongly influenced by themes of connection to the natural world. Playing Shim's narrative games often involves creating a keepsake artifact.

Career

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Shim was made redundant from her outdoor education job and pivoted to "full-time game design in 2020". She is the co-designer on Field Guide to Memory (2021) with Shing Yin Khor. Field Guide to Memory centers on the creation of a journal through guided writing prompts with occasional live action mechanics, such as going on a hike in real life to echo a fictional hike experienced by the characters in-game. The Verge highlighted that "the pair defined keepsake games as both a genre and a useful shorthand for their work". Academics Greg Loring-Albright and Wes Willison highlighted that while Shim and Khor coined the term "keepsake game" in 2021, the collaborators have slightly different definitions with Shim "more interested in thematic concerns [...]. If Khor delimits how a keepsake game's keepsake object comes to be, Shim explores what that object is meant to do or mean. [...] Khor approaches the material keepsake object and works backwards through its procedural creation to its co-authors: the game designer and the player. Shim starts with the process and its intended thematics and situates the keepsake object as a result of those processes".

In addition to working with Khor on Field Guide to Memory, Shim has collaborated on indie role-playing game projects with Jason Morningstar and Lucian Kahn. Shim is also the creator of other keepsake games such as The Shape of Shadows, The Last Will and Testament of Gideon Blythe, and The Snow Queen which were all funded via crowdfunding campaigns. The Snow Queen is a game for two players, loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. It adapts the game mechanics of Chess.

Linda Codega, for Io9 in 2022, stated that they are an "ardent fan and admirer of the short games" Shim has published on Itch.io which are "hallmarked by ethereal storytelling, psychological immersion, and a unique, punky design aesthetic. While many of her games follow the suit of Field Guide to Memory, in which a keepsake is created, many others dive into the transformative, otherwordly, and horrific". In 2023, Codega included Shim on a list of "people to follow" in the "Year Ahead in Tabletop Roleplaying Games" – they described Shim as "an innovative and fresh voice in tabletop design" pursuing sustainable and independent game design with "nearly a dozen games [released] over the past three years".

Awards and nominations

Field Guide to Memory won the 2021 IndieCade Award in the best live game category. Shim was awarded the inaugural Diana Jones Emerging Designer Award in 2021. In 2022, Shim was nominated for "Designer of the Year" in the inaugural Tabletop Awards by Dicebreaker at PAX Unplugged.