HALEY SNOWDEN

Haley Snowden is a graphic designer soon to be based in Bentonville, Arkansas. She challenges herself to design for new topics and in new styles, all to support her research for any given project. In Frankly, she is working to combine her love of board games with the need for therapeutic resources for those adapting to grief.

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“FRANKLY, THERE AREN’T ENOUGH ENGAGING THERAPEUTIC RESOURCES FOR GRIEF.”

Float was born by marrying games and grief. Haley Snowden constructed Float as a therapeutic tool for young adults who are grieving significant loss. Float is a semi-collaborative game where players face challenges to move across the board and rescue a helpless character who is floating out in space. The challenges mimic real-world complications a grieving person might encounter, and players are equipped with skills and items that are similar to a real-life example as well. 

A large component of this game is storytelling, the number one treatment for recovering from loss. A world is built around the game: a spaceship filled with animals racing to save Griffin the wolf pup. Each player is equipped with a predetermined character with a story coinciding to their strengths and weaknesses. These details might seem arbitrary, but Haley assures the players that this is a construct to fuel and stretch their own storytelling abilities. 

“It is a tool I learned creating Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. If I could start a game that everyone could easily imagine, they would begin to take over the creation of the story and characters,” Haley said. 

What’s more than gameplay experiences is the effect stories have on those grieving significant loss. This is particularly beneficial to grievers who never got to say goodbye. The story extends an experience that was cut off too abruptly. 

Float also depicts the compounded effects of primary and secondary losses that make up change. For example, when a student graduates high school there is a primary loss of that chapter of one’s life. However, that student is also losing a structured schedule, governing authority figures, friends, and the freedom to not have to choose what comes next. These are all secondary losses. Float uses the terminology challenges. This not only reflects what primary and secondary rules can do to an individual but also converts loss into goal-oriented thinking. This is also an effective strategy in the real world.