Mays Dweiri – Womenize! – Inspiring Stories
Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Mays Dweiri, Multidisciplinary Artist, Animator, and Game Developer. She speaks about her background in architecture inspired her to create the interactive game A Heavy Morning, using space and player agency to depict the emotional weight of mental health struggles while encouraging persistence, self-compassion, and personal reflection.. Read more about Mays here:
Hi Mays! What inspired you to shift from designing physical spaces to creating animated and interactive worlds, and how has your architectural background influenced the way you approach storytelling and game design today?
I have always been fascinated by how spaces shape human experience, so the shift from physical architecture to animated and interactive worlds felt like a natural progression. In moving toward animation, I specifically sought to break free from the physical and material constraints of construction work. I wanted the freedom to build spaces that touch the virtual and the emotional, affective experience, rather than just the physical. While my background in architecture taught me how to construct tangible environments, my transition into animation—and my current PhD research—allows me to deeply explore the intersection of built spaces, narrative, and interactivity. Architecture deeply influences my game design because it taught me how to use space to guide a person’s emotions and actions. In A Heavy Morning, the environment itself is a storytelling device; the psychological symptoms act as environmental clues, and the physical space of the room reflects the character’s internal state as the player navigates it.
Your game A Heavy Morning explores emotional weight and everyday experiences in a very intimate way. What motivated you to tell this story through an interactive format, and how do you hope players will reflect on their own feelings or experiences after playing it?
My motivation was to show that taking the very first step—whether in the morning or in any new endeavor—is often the most daunting part of the process. When someone is battling a mental health disorder, simply finding the motivation to get out of bed can feel like an insurmountable challenge. I wanted to focus on ordinary, universally predictable actions and distort them through the lens of cognitive distortion and emotional baggage. As for the players, we intentionally avoided making the protagonist too highly individualized so that a larger audience could project their own experiences onto the game. I hope it communicates a sense of grace. I want players to realize that having the character retreat to bed is not a failure state, but an act of trying again. The only true objective is to not give up.
You’ve worked in animation, illustration, children’s books, and game development. How do you decide which medium is the right one for a story, and what does interactivity allow you to express that animation alone cannot?
Deciding on the right medium usually comes down to what the emotional core of the narrative demands from its audience. A Heavy Morning actually began as an animation, but I quickly realized I needed that core element of interactivity. Giving the viewer agency brings so much more to this specific story than leaving them as a passive spectator. What interactivity allows—that animation alone cannot—is for the player’s repetitions, failures, and frustrations to actively author the pacing of the narrative. It transforms the experience from a predetermined cinematic event into a personalized journey, where completing each small step becomes a victory. Ultimately, I view this work as occupying its own realm right in between a game and a film.