“I’d call the police if certain family members knocked on my door” she says. “I’m trying to avoid the chaos it’d bring for the sake of my daughter.” It’s not the typical conundrum a video games developer faces.

Even now, Jay only communicates with one person in her family. The rest have completely cut ties with her. It all goes back to her upbringing. She grew up in the north east of England in the eighties as part of a religious group she describes as a “cult”. Her childhood experiences have inspired the characters and storyline in her upcoming adventure game, Quantum Witch.

Both sides of her family—her mother’s and father’s—have been involved in this particular religious circle (which Jay prefers not to name) for two generations, making it inevitable that she would be included too. As a result, she wasn’t allowed to have friends and was expected to rigidly preach her beliefs to anyone she met.

“I’d turn down invites to Christmas and birthday parties before explaining my beliefs to other kids,” Jay says. We’re speaking via Zoom from her home. She sits in a dimly lit room with a green sheet covering the window behind her. She recalls being spat on at school by a group of girls. “People used to call me a ‘religious freak’ and a ‘weirdo,’” she explains.

She felt socially isolated. After school, she was required to study for religious meetings held multiple times each week. These gatherings took place in what she calls a corporate-style meeting hall without windows. “It was the most soulless, life-draining experience you could imagine,” she adds.

Each meeting began with a prayer and lasted for two hours. Male leaders delivered sermons from a stage about how everyone outside the group was being deceived, while members listened passively. According to Jay, these speeches were intentionally given in a monotone voice to keep people “in a daze” and discourage critical thinking. “The routine was so dull, you’d just slip into zombie mode. ‘Brainwashing’ sounds extreme, but in this case, it fits,” she says.

These teachings filled Jay’s mind with disturbing ideas. “They’d say things like, ‘God is going to come and kill you if you don’t obey him completely,’” she remembers. Members were also discouraged from receiving certain medical treatments (again, she chooses not to elaborate due to fears of retaliation).

“If you needed surgery, you had to be ready to face death,” Jay says, adding that a friend died because of this belief, convinced that God would bring her back to life. Though it’s a painful subject, Jay tries to stay positive throughout our conversation. She admits that dark humor is her way of coping.

During this time, Jay found solace in video games. At age eight, she begged her parents for a ZX Spectrum, and they eventually gave in. That summer, she pored over the system’s manual and learned how to create her own text-based adventure games. “Once I realized I could escape into these computer-generated worlds, I knew it would become my lifelong passion,” she adds.

Things got even harder for Jay when, at 17, she realized she was gay—an identity strictly condemned by the group’s teachings. She recalls one preacher declaring in a sermon that it would be “great when all the lesbians are dead.” Frightened, she kept her sexuality hidden until she was 19. That revelation turned out to be a major turning point.

It sparked a huge argument with her family. Heartbroken and rejected, she was forced to leave home and was effectively excommunicated from the “cult.” With no money, she became homeless. She remembers having to use a hacksaw to open a tin of tuna—the only food she had. “You’re taught not to invest in the outside world, so when you end up in that situation, you have no idea where to go or how to survive,” she says.

No one in her family would answer her calls. Eventually, Jay accepted that she had to build a new life for herself. A weekend job at a video games store opened up, and for the first time ever, she made friends. That led to couch surfing, then a job in web development, and finally her own apartment.

“That’s a big theme in Quantum Witch,” explains Jay. “Toward the end, it becomes about choice and personal freedom—taking control of your actions instead of letting others dictate them,” she adds.

Quantum Witch is a 2D pixelated adventure game set in the land of Hus. Players take on the role of Ren, who begins to realize that something is off in her otherwise peaceful life. The gameplay features fetch quests and narrative choices influenced by classic titles like the ZX Spectrum’s Dizzy series (1987) and LucasArts games such as Day of the Tentacle (1993).

Originally, Quantum Witch started out as a novel, but Jay struggled with writing a full book. “I turned some of my experiences into metaphors and short stories, but I couldn’t piece them together into a coherent narrative with a strong through-line,” she says.

Though Jay developed Quantum Witch mostly on her own, she received narrative help from BAFTA award-winning writer Paul Rose and journalist Stephanie Sterling, both of whom are credited in the game’s end credits. Other influences include the comedy series Red Dwarf, the works of Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and fourth-wall-breaking films like Deadpool (2016). “I wanted something that looked retro but also cartoonish, capable of shifting quickly from cheerful to dark,” Jay explains.

Today, she lives with her wife, daughter, and cat, and says she has managed to distance herself from the strict lifestyle she grew up in—though she admits it took decades to do so. Some memories she uncovered while creating Quantum Witch are still hard to revisit, but she now sees her past through a different lens.

“Instead of treating my past like a tragedy, I wanted to turn it into an absurdist comedy. I took that cult background and created exaggerated characters based on it, highlighting just how ridiculous it all was. It really helped me process. If you can laugh at something, it loses its hold over you,” she says.

Quantum Witch is available on PC from June 24

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