Hanwen Xu Mame
His works have been exhibited internationally at the Museum of the Moving Image, the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Boshi’s place, and Wonderville NYC.
SEP 30, 2025
We're here with Hanwen Xu Mame, an indie game developer whose work pushes the boundaries of what video games can express as an artistic medium. Their games tackle everything from gender identity to internet culture, creating immersive worlds that are equal parts beautiful and unsettling. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today.
Can you tell us about your path from 3D animation to independent game-making? What pushed you to make that transition?
I started out as a 3D animator during my undergraduate years, working as an animator and technical artist on projects ranging from small indie games to major AAA titles. I loved creating moving images, but the work quickly felt alienating. In large productions, I had little control, and I realized that unless I was in a director's position, my creative voice would always be limited.
That frustration pushed me to start making my own games. At first, it was overwhelming — indie development requires coding, design, art, and production all at once — but it was also empowering. I finally had the freedom to shape a project from the ground up, to inject my own perspective without compromise. My early works, like People Mountain People Sea, gained traction online, and through connecting with other independent creators, I learned new tools and workflows that made the process smoother.
Over time, everything clicked. Now, working in a game engine feels as natural to me as drawing once did — a medium where I can experiment, express myself, and build worlds that truly feel my own.
Can you tell us about your path from 3D animation to independent game-making? What pushed you to make that transition?
I started out as a 3D animator during my undergraduate years, working as an animator and technical artist on projects ranging from small indie games to major AAA titles. I loved creating moving images, but the work quickly felt alienating. In large productions, I had little control, and I realized that unless I was in a director's position, my creative voice would always be limited.
That frustration pushed me to start making my own games. At first, it was overwhelming — indie development requires coding, design, art, and production all at once — but it was also empowering. I finally had the freedom to shape a project from the ground up, to inject my own perspective without compromise. My early works, like People Mountain People Sea, gained traction online, and through connecting with other independent creators, I learned new tools and workflows that made the process smoother.
Over time, everything clicked. Now, working in a game engine feels as natural to me as drawing once did — a medium where I can experiment, express myself, and build worlds that truly feel my own.
You've described having "crazy images" flowing through your mind since childhood. How do video games allow you to express these visions in ways other mediums couldn't?
Since I was a kid, I had crazy images coming and going through my mind. I would put characters from films, shows, videos, and even myself into different worlds and scenarios together. My head was always overflowing with impossible crossovers and shifting landscapes, and I've always felt an urgent need to get those worlds out of me and share them with others.
I experimented with a lot of mediums along the way. I tried writing novels, drawing, making short films, and animations — but none of them clicked with me the way video games did. Games felt natural, almost inevitable. Because they are multidisciplinary, they let me insert myself in as many ways as possible: through writing, image-making, interaction design, sound, and code. They give me the chance to overwhelm people, to saturate them with sensation, to completely immerse them in my world rather than just let them look at it from the outside.
I think of the games I make as collages. They're messy, layered, overflowing. I like to include as many sensory treats as I can: strange textures, unexpected sounds, sudden shifts in perspective, moments of quiet, and moments of chaos. To me, a game is a space where contradictions can live together, and where beauty and discomfort can collide.
I've also seen tragedies in my life. They've broken me down piece by piece, and I carry those fractures with me. My games are, in a way, giant mirrors made of those shards. When players step into them, I want them to first catch their own reflection — to see themselves refracted in the pieces. And if they stay with the mirror, if they lean closer, they might also notice what lies behind it: my own stories, my own pain, my own obsessions stitched into the fabric of the world they're exploring.
Those personal fragments you mention—the pain and obsessions—seem to manifest as specific themes in your work: gender, sexuality, religion, and internet culture. How do these experiences from your own life shape the worlds you create?
I'm both too self-conscious and too uninterested in telling other people's stories in my games. The themes I explore are the ones I wrestle with most in my own life. Growing up in China, I struggled with gender dysphoria and isolation. With busy parents and no one to talk to, I spent much of my time online. The internet became my space to process identity, desire, shame, and alienation. That's why subjects like gender, sex, religion, therapy, and meme culture recur in my work — they're not arbitrary; they're the fragments of how I grew up.
Currently, I'm working with another queer video game artist in NYC, Hatim Benhsain, on a 3D swimming/sex game called “coalescent || tidal rapture”. It dives into a world of merpeople who are transforming and discovering casual relationships, seen through the eyes of an outsider who's just been dumped and refuses to evolve.
It's fascinating how you weave those personal narratives into the actual architecture of your games. You've said that virtual environments are the narrative in your work. Can you walk us through how you build these worlds—both technically and conceptually?
For me, virtual environments aren't just backdrops — they are the narrative. The way a space feels, how it invites or denies interaction, or how its logic is bent — these elements often say more than text or dialogue ever could. I use 3D and generative systems because they allow me to create worlds that feel unstable, alive, and in flux — mirroring the instability of memory, gender, or even emotional states. Borrowing from sampling in music, I also love to sample and remix existing 3D models, repurposing them to create new meanings. For example, in Growth Spurt, a meandering intermission in to the after hour of a miscalculation, an award-nominated game I worked on, many of the assets are remixed from titles like Dark Souls and Mario, collaged into something that feels familiar, fun, and a bit unsettling.
What's the biggest challenge of working in games compared to other art forms, especially when you're trying to maintain that emotional rawness you mentioned?
Video games are probably the most distant art form when it comes to bridging a creator's emotional spark and the final outcome. Every interaction requires multiple layers: first conceptualizing the mechanic, then coding it, then building assets, animations, and audio around it. This labor stretches the distance between idea and expression. It's easy for the rawness of emotion to get lost in translation.
I'm experimenting with ways to fight against that — prototyping faster, embracing imperfection, and designing systems where the labor itself shows through as part of the aesthetic. I want my games to feel intimate and emotional.
Your games often push players into uncomfortable territory—horror, shame, desire. How do you think about "play" as something beyond entertainment?
Play is not just entertainment. It's a cultural practice, a way of processing life, and a tool for inhabiting perspectives outside our own. In my work, I try to stretch play beyond comfort and enjoyment — I want it to unsettle, provoke, confuse, and trap, as much as it can delight. What fascinates me is how play can be both enforcing and alienating. In a horror movie, you can always look away, but in a horror game, the only way out is through — you must keep playing to finish it. That enforced participation transforms the experience, opening possibilities for players to confront emotions they might otherwise avoid: fear, shame, desire, or intimacy. This tension is what makes games such a uniquely powerful medium.
What are some of the artists and creators who have shaped your work and helped you develop this vision?
Oshimi Shuzo, in how he approaches personal, queer narratives that don't sanitize or celebrate queerness, but instead confess its shame, profanity, and oppression. Blood on the Tracks is a big influence.
Cosmo D, a New York–based indie game maker, inspires me in his approach to worldbuilding and narrative. His Betrayal at Club Low showed me how to weave environment and story seamlessly, and I've been lucky to be part of the development of his upcoming Moves of the Diamond Hand.
Looking ahead, what directions or projects do you envision as a game designer, and how do they fit into your broader goals as an artist?
I'm starting a co-op called Games for My Computer with friends and collaborators. It's both a creative collective and a resource hub. Under a shared ethos, we'll make games and related media together, but also share technical resources, publishing strategies, and development tools with collaborators.
The hope is to build a structure where making games isn't just about survival or individual genius, but about collective labor, shared voices, and new ways of sustaining independent practices.
I'm experimenting with ways to fight against that — prototyping faster, embracing imperfection, and designing systems where the labor itself shows through as part of the aesthetic. I want my games to feel intimate and emotional.
Your games often push players into uncomfortable territory—horror, shame, desire. How do you think about "play" as something beyond entertainment?
Play is not just entertainment. It's a cultural practice, a way of processing life, and a tool for inhabiting perspectives outside our own. In my work, I try to stretch play beyond comfort and enjoyment — I want it to unsettle, provoke, confuse, and trap, as much as it can delight. What fascinates me is how play can be both enforcing and alienating. In a horror movie, you can always look away, but in a horror game, the only way out is through — you must keep playing to finish it. That enforced participation transforms the experience, opening possibilities for players to confront emotions they might otherwise avoid: fear, shame, desire, or intimacy. This tension is what makes games such a uniquely powerful medium.
What are some of the artists and creators who have shaped your work and helped you develop this vision?
Oshimi Shuzo, in how he approaches personal, queer narratives that don't sanitize or celebrate queerness, but instead confess its shame, profanity, and oppression. Blood on the Tracks is a big influence.
Cosmo D, a New York–based indie game maker, inspires me in his approach to worldbuilding and narrative. His Betrayal at Club Low showed me how to weave environment and story seamlessly, and I've been lucky to be part of the development of his upcoming Moves of the Diamond Hand.
Looking ahead, what directions or projects do you envision as a game designer, and how do they fit into your broader goals as an artist?
I'm starting a co-op called Games for My Computer with friends and collaborators. It's both a creative collective and a resource hub. Under a shared ethos, we'll make games and related media together, but also share technical resources, publishing strategies, and development tools with collaborators.
The hope is to build a structure where making games isn't just about survival or individual genius, but about collective labor, shared voices, and new ways of sustaining independent practices.