A Sanctuary of Stuff

Francesca Tremulo & Eszter Várhidi / Denmark, Italy & Hungary

Characters, vehicles, furniture. Hats, food, street trash cans. Rusty electrical boxes. Guns. A lot of guns. Something finally catches your eye. A digestive system. You don't know it yet, but it'll become the centerpiece of your next "I'll for real finish this one" project.

Digital assets – laying amassed in online stores, often sold in packs for less than 10$ – are the building blocks of many personal projects, prototypes, and even full fledged video games. They say a lot about the culture and practices that exist around contemporary video game making, yet their value is often overlooked.

We built A Sanctuary of Stuff to put digital assets in the spotlight, arguing for the importance of preserving them. We invited game developers to reflect on their relationship with these objects and asked them to tell us all about their favorite one: how they found it, what do they use it for and why they love it or hate it so much.

Explore the corridors of a weird collection of even weirder things, listen to the stories, and wonder what you would possibly use these assets for.

Francesca Tremulo

Co-designer, Co-director and Producer

Biography

Francesca Tremulo is a designer and a writer interested in anything play-related. She started off in the gaming industry by writing for magazines such as Ludica and Eurogamer, until she decided she wanted to be involved in the making of video games too. She worked on Death Howl (2025) as a narrative designer and on One Btn Bosses (2024) as a community manager. Now, after completing her MSc in Games, she is working on various analog games and finding new ways to bring play into interactive media and other forms of storytelling.

Eszter Várhidi

Co-designer and Co-director

Biography

Eszter Várhidi is a playful adventurer in the realms of games and adjacent interactive products. Her work revolves around human experiences—whether it’s through the games she designs, conducting game user research, or organizing industry events such as game jams, talks, and workshops. She was an exhibitor in the Playful Experiences track at the 2024 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.