Interfacing Wombs

Interfacing Wombs is a short, shift-based simulation about operating a clinical gestation console under quota.

You are entering an environment where biological mothers are no longer required. Legacy gendered care roles have been fully decommissioned. Reproductive and affective labour is now performed exclusively by automated care systems. 

Welcome to the Ovum Processing Facility™.

You inseminate “units”,  stabilise three vitals (pressure, oxygen, cortisol) inside a narrow norm window, and advance each month toward extraction. The interface insists you’re providing neutral care. The system around it quietly optimises for a very specific primary template.

As you complete cycles, the womb visuals and anomaly readings begin to drift, reports accumulate in the archive, and the language of compliance and quotas slowly exposes what’s actually being selected and who is being erased.

Features

• Shift-based womb interface simulation

• Three adjustable vitals: pressure, oxygen, cortisol

• A quota-driven workflow: inseminate → adjust vitals → advance month → extract → ship

• Typing logs and system reports that track your care and compliance

• Anomaly visuals and a growing sense of something fundamentally wrong

• Multiple cycles leading to a final archival manifesto

Controls

• Mouse only

• Headphones recommended

Content notes

Themes of pregnancy, clinical environments, systemic discrimination, dehumanisation and reproductive control. No explicit gore, but the mood is tense, cold and political.

This game comes from my growing fear of a global rollback in women’s rights and bodily autonomy. It’s a deliberately dystopian, speculative interface, but as technology and control systems advance, I worry that this future is closer than we’d like to admit.

I am a non-binary creator (none/they/them) with a background in female socialisation. Through a cold, shift-based interface, the game asks what happens when patriarchy and biopolitics are coded so deep into medical and logistical systems that other bodies simply stop counting as human. 

The project is created from a gender-marginalised perspective and uses game design to critically engage with structural violence, erasure, and the futures marginalized genders are pushed towards.

Interfacing Wombs was created during a game design module "Retromorphose" at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

A short gameplay video below shows a full shift in action