Creator: Kay Slater
Exhibition: CYOW 5: Sweaty
Published: May 2026
Format: Twine (Harlowe 3.3.0)
Access: kdot.ca, Written English, requires a browser
Content Warning: Aging, mortality, grief, parenthood, pregnancy, miscarriage, and bodily change
I dedicate this game to every body who is agender, genderqueer or non-binary (and those who overlap). This game was an expression of my frustration towards the lack of gender-affirming care and literature available to aging non-binary, agender and trans bodies, and I wanted to write something that expressed the confusion, possibility, and joy of existing outside of the binary. Whatever you are going through, whatever you think you are, you know best. What you feel is real. Trust yourself.
Description of the Work
In Falling Sand, players inhabit a body made of sand moving through a vast hourglass. Relationships form and dissolve. Children are raised, lost, adopted, and remembered. Bodies accumulate experience, wear down, transform, and eventually return to the larger cycle. While the game contains themes of grief and mortality, it is equally concerned with wonder, companionship, creativity, and the small moments of meaning that persist even as time moves quickly forward.
How the Work Relates to the Theme
The project began as an attempt to confront my own fears around menopause. As a trans, non-binary person approaching middle age, I found myself surrounded by stories about menopause that felt incomplete, contradictory, or rooted in assumptions about womanhood that did not reflect my own experiences. Searching for answers was frustrating and contributed to my anxiety and body dysmorphia. I still dread thinking about what will eventually happen to my body. It is like puberty all over again, but rather than a sense of anticipation, it is mostly dread and uncertainty.
I decided to focus on that uncertainty for this project: how do we navigate change when the language and resources available to us feel insufficient, do not match our gender (or lack thereof), and when we lack a community or system of care to support our needs?
Process & Project Photos
The third image is the title screen illustration, A stylized graphic depicts a seated figure above curling waves. The lower half of the figure’s body is filled with small dots, some of which drift outward around the form. The title, Falling Sands, is written in cursive and integrated into the illustration, sharing the same flowing line quality as the figure and waves. A small signature appears below the graphic: a lowercase “k.” followed by “2026.”]
Project Files
- Falling Sand, kdot.ca (live Salon)