Artist & Game Designer
Expanding theLanguage andAudience of Games
I make games that explore what interaction can express, whose experiences games can represent, and who feels invited to play. My work moves between experimental performance, tactile puzzles and personal storytelling, using familiar and unfamiliar forms of play to explore human experience.
Artistic inquiry
01
Interaction as Expression
How can the actions we perform in games give form to emotions, relationships and social experiences?
02
Expanding Participation
How can games make room for different perspectives, stories and creators without demanding familiarity with established gaming conventions?
Experimentation and accessibility are not opposites. Their relationship is one of the central questions of my practice.
/media/perfect-woman/home.jpg When social expectations become physical performance.
A movement-based game that turns the pressure to live a perfect life into a physical challenge.
Co-created with Peter Lu
Explore Perfect Woman/media/assemble-with-care/home.jpg Repairing objects. Reconnecting people.
An exploration of how tactile interactions can become metaphors for care, memory and emotional repair.
Game Director & Lead Game Designer, ustwo games
Explore Assemble with Care/media/finding-hannah/home.jpg Making room for stories rarely told in games.
Three generations of women, their search for self-determination, and familiar forms of play that invite new audiences into their stories.
Game Director & Game Designer, Fein Games
Explore Finding HannahSmall failures. Playable stories.
An ongoing experiment in interactive storytelling, combining personal accounts of everyday imperfection with short illustrated narratives and accessible logic puzzles.
Work in progress · prototype
/media/failing/story-1.jpg /media/failing/story-2.jpg /media/failing/gameplay-portrait.mp4 Other selected work
/media/monument-valley-2/thumb.jpg Monument Valley 2 2017
Exploring how spatial interaction can express the relationship between a mother and child.
Senior Game Designer, ustwo games
About
Lea Schönfelder is a German artist and game designer whose work explores games as a medium for personal, emotional and social expression. Her practice spans independent experimental games, internationally recognised interactive works and interdisciplinary creative collaborations.
Her projects include Perfect Woman, Monument Valley 2, Assemble with Care and Finding Hannah. She co-founded the independent studio Fein Games and continues to explore new approaches to interactive storytelling through her ongoing work Failing.
Selected recognition
- BAFTA Breakthrough UK Personal recognition 2020
- Apple App Store Award, Cultural Impact Finding Hannah 2023
- A MAZE. Most Amazing Game Award Perfect Woman 2014