Lush Ruins: Watershards

‘Lush Ruins: Watershards’ is set in the Quadrian Kingdom, a digital game world that has survived the Great Wilt — a cataclysmic event that left everything in ruins. The film follows an unnamed character wearing a cat mask who roams the kingdom carrying a bag of artefacts. Along their journey, they meet various people and initiate conversations by offering memories of the past. These tales often contradict yet cross-reference one another, revealing a layered, cryptic narrative told solely through objects.

Drawing on archaeological storytelling — a method common in video games that foregrounds artefacts as narrative tools — the project challenges the traditional hero archetype. In an era of increasingly polarised politics, both left- and right-wing movements call for heroic figures. Yet the hero often dominates, extracts, and controls. Instead, ‘Lush Ruins: Watershards’ explores para-heroic figures — characters who do not erase the hero, but decentralise them, placing them alongside other narrative elements in a shared storytelling space.