Rachel Li is an interdisciplinary game designer and artist from Shenzhen, China and currently based in California. Inspired by her observations and reflections on personal identity, nature, and technology, she creates emotion-driven and often autobiographical projects that attempt to reverse-engineer the intricate systems behind the human experience.
Her work Hot Pot For One, a game about cooking hot pot alone on Christmas Eve, has received critical acclaim, including a BAFTA Student Award nomination for Best Immersive. With the help of NYU Game Center Incubator program, Li co-founded an all-woman studio Eat Melon LLC in 2020 to develop Nothing to See Here!, a sex-positive card game published by Clarkson Potter, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House. Her art installations and experimental games have been featured in various art exhibitions and major game festivals in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and on the internet.
She currently works as a VR Game Designer at Skydance Interactive on the upcoming title Behemoth.
Games.
A game about the bittersweet feeling of making hotpot at home for yourself. Made with Unity. Now Available on Steam.
Vampire Simulation is an experimental VR game of a person transforming into a vampire and catching its prey. Made in Unreal Engine 4.
Double R. is a Walking Simulator that attempts to capture the awkwardness and social anxieties introverts often encounter in their lives. Made in Unity.
Nothing To See Here!
Nothing to See Here! is a creative storytelling card game where players make up stories to get themselves out of compromising situations.
A short 3D level made in Unreal Engine 4 about meeting up with your friend in a natural history museum.
A real-time plant-growing simulator where players are given a mysterious plant, and are asked to nurture it from a seed to a fully grown plant in a span of a week in real time.
Use mouse to click options that controls your life, play with it, balance it, enjoy it, destroy it, give it up, rip it apart, and finally, deal with it.
Made in CiGA Game Jam 2020.
Clean Your Shit Up is a 3D game made in Global Game Jam 2020 with the theme Repair. Inspired by people who love to keep their space clean.
Alt-Controller Games
Games that experiment with physical computing and alternative ways of interacting with the digital interface.
Interdisciplinary Projects.
My Echo
Red Yellow Blue
R.E.D
2021, Simulation & Interactive Installation
My Echo is a 3D simulation of an echoing mountain made in a game engine. One initiates by shouting into their microphone; after a few seconds they would hear a playback of their voice with a reverb effect, similar to an echo--the natural phenomenon caused by the reflection of sound waves. Li attempts to summon a familiar image often associated with echos: being on top of the mountains, surrounded by a vast land of rocks and trees, feeling small and insignificant, one shouts into the void, hoping for a response from the unknown.
2018, Interactive Immersive Installation
This piece consists of three virtual scenes displayed in VR headsets placed in three separate spaces within the exhibition room. In each scene, the viewer is placed in specific locations--public bathroom, children's park, and hotel room, with a child. The seemingly childish and innocent but subtly eerie and sexual scenes confronts viewer to make an association usually perceived as shameful and prohibited--that of children with sexuality.
2017, Interactive Immersive Installation
An attempt to examine the emerging culture of live-streaming and its potential entanglement with surveillance and the spectacle.
A collaboration with Nicole Wang and Runa Yu.
Hit & Run
2018, Interactive Installation
A two-player racing game in which players smash their paintings repeatedly to move their avatar and reach the finish line on the other side of the screen. By transforming viewers into players, this piece is an attempt to question the pre-existing notion of art and challenge the “proper” way of treating an artwork.
Robot Revolt
-An Escape Room
A Turing Test Escape the Room with roles for 4 players and an ending that requires the players to prove their humanity through empathy. A 7-person project for a class.
Real-Time Experiments
Experiments with real-time graphics programming and tools rendered in game engines. Topics include procedural generation, shaders programming, AI, and render textures
Talks and Writings.
Podcast
A Chinese-language podcast focusing on the artistry and culture of video game development. Centering each episode around a theme, the hosts start a brainstorming session on new game ideas, inspirations, and what it takes to bring those ideas to life.
Writing
An essay reflecting on my personal experience making friends online. Tracking down the physical locations of "the Cloud", I visited the place where most of my digital friendships materialistically took place in the form of data. Staring in the face of the machine powering our digital lives, I reflect on what it means to travel and make real connections in the internet era. (2024, Initium Media)
Panel
How do you meaningfully include sex, kink, & sexuality in games? What are the design & safety considerations? How can we create experiences that aren't offensive or embarrassing? In this panel I shared the process of designing Nothing To See Here! and how we subverted common design tropes to create a sexually positive and inclusive player experience. (2020, Game Devs of Color Expo)
In this 2020 Babycastles Residency presentation, I shared the inspirations and process of creating the game Realistic Plant Growing Simulator. You can learn more about the game here.
Client Work.
Music Video for 江北嘴暮色
by Fantasy Girl 1985
Directed and produced a retro synthwave style music video for Fantasy Girl music 江北嘴暮色 as part of their debut EP 重庆迷雾. Process includes concept and visual design, story-boarding, designing and rendering 3D scenes, creating 3D animations, and video editing.
Cyberpunk Music Video for
1 2 3 4 by Uzumakid Li
Directed and produced a music video for Uzumakid Li's song 1 2 3 4. Process includes concept and visual design, story-boarding, designing and rendering 3D scenes, creating 3D animations, and video editing.
Music Videos for PO8's 2020 EP
血钻 The Tragic West
Directed and produced 3 music videos for this EP. Process includes concept and visual design, story-boarding, designing and rendering 3D scenes, creating 3D animations, and video editing.
