/sow-ˈdah-dā/ (noun): a state of profound melancholy, nostalgia, and longing for a beloved something or someone that is absent.

Grief is messy.

I wanted to make a simple game that offered people space to explore grief and loss in community with others. Saudade is my attempt at that. My hope is that it allows people to enter into vulnerability and reverence together, in a way that feels safe and avoids requiring players to share their own personal grief or loss journeys. 

Concepts like the Portuguese Saudade and the Japanese perspective of mono no aware are powerful evocations of pathos that often go unexplored in the Western cultural context I inhabit. Sitting with grief, holding it in your hands, turning it over and examining it from all sides, learning to welcome and embrace its presence... these vital steps towards healing after loss are often considered too small, slow, and subtle for us to pursue.

In this game you'll play as the Saudade, tiny spirits who search for grief and memories in the small things that people overlook or forget in our rush to move on. You'll discover these objects in the environment around you and bring them to the group, where together you'll examine them and share the memories they contain.  Through these acts of Community, Ritual, and willingness to mindfully embrace the grief together, you'll help return the grief and memories to the person who lost them, and they can begin to heal.

Thanks for checking it out. It is my hope this game evokes in you the same sense of refreshing bittersweetness that it does in me.

The inspiration for this game is myriad and expansive, however I drew specific game design inspiration from a perfect rock by Deep Dark Games, as well as thematic inspiration from the music of Cloud Cult, Hammock, (and, of course, The Saudades) and my many years as a crisis counselor, friend, and human.