A game by Tender Claws, an award-winning art and games studio co-led by incoming CAMD faculty member Samantha Gorman, has been selected as a finalist for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media. The game, entitled The Under Presents, is a finalist for the single Juried Award in this category.

The Under Presents can be described as immersive theater meeting virtual reality (VR). It is an intriguing multiplayer experience set between two worlds: a jaunty vaudeville stage and the harrowing survival narrative. Players work to uncover the story of a ship stranded in time as supplies dwindle and day-by-day an otherworldly mist rolls closer. They follow characters’ interlocking fates as all journeys forward must turn back or ultimately become lost.

Samantha Gorman, who is joining the Department of Art + Design as an Assistant Professor this Fall, is the co-founder of Tender Claws, the studio behind The Under Presents. She is a writer, artist, curator and educator whose work combines text, cinema, games, virtual reality and scholarship about digital media. The studio is currently showing Tempest nightly through September.

To view last year’s winners of the Juried Award in Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media, please click here.