About two months ago I  covered what new innovations in the tabletop genre could look like, through the theme of the Hive Mind. Well, our Help the Hive game jam is complete and it’s time to see what folks made as a result of that prompt. There were three submissions, one of which we’ll chat about today, and two of the others who will be highlighted in future article(s).

“Expert musicians portray awe-inspiring precision, timing, and phrasing and may be thought to partake in a ‘hive-mind.’ Such a shared musical absorption is characterized by a heightened empathic relation, mutual trust, and a sense that the music “takes over,” thus uniting the performers’ musical intentions”- Into the Hive-Mind: Shared Absorption and Cardiac Interrelations in Expert and Student String Quartets

When Silence Comes by Narrative Alchemy seeks to bring a sort of harmony to loss, portraying the emotional toll, grief, and small joys found within dementia. The author takes inspiration from their own life and family, alongside various hive-influences, to help handle and hold a space for play on a fairly tough subject.

A Jenga tower represents the mental and emotional fragility of a telepathic community coping with a member's dementia. Players remove blocks from the tower, each time contributing a memory by writing emotions, actions, people, or places on the block. These memories grow a story and are shared with the person nearing death as a way of preserving their connection. If the tower partially collapses, it symbolizes a severe cognitive decline in the loved one, and the group shifts to sharing memories more quickly. If the entire tower falls, it marks the individual's death, signifying the loss and grief the community now faces.

This has got me thinking about the overlap between topics of play and grief. Lately, my partner and I have been watching Bluey to unwind after a long day of work, and one episode, "Space," stands out to me. The characters play make-believe in a spaceship, with one child drawn to a black hole—a place of unknown hazard. Entering it, she confronts a childhood memory tied to fear and possible abandonment. While the conflict from that past moment was already resolved, the feelings lingered, and the play allowed her to process those complex emotions. A similar use of play is seen in “Copycat,” where make-believe helps the characters replicate and self-manage the passing of an injured bird.

Play is fun, but holds purpose. It has even been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child.

Read more about how play can be used to hold a space on tough subjects here: https://holisticdice.substack.com/p/playing-with-loss-within-the-hive