The grand narrative that’s made it on mobile

The Serpent & The Seed is a welcome addition to the cosy games genre.

Giles Gough

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who hosts the God in Film podcast.

A mobile game still shows a robin standing close to a seated man.

Mungo and Adam.

The Serpent & The Seed is a game with a difference: an imaginative retelling of the world's greatest story. In a world overtaken by an evil serpent, you play the character of Mungo, a young robin encouraged by his owl friend to read an old, mostly forgotten book that holds the promise for salvation.

Released last Easter by Discipleship Tech (the creators of the Prayer Mate app) The Serpent & The Seed aims to tells the story of the Bible as a mobile adventure game. Turning the Bible story into an app feel like quite a novel idea. A cursory search shows that there’s no shortage of Bible based games to play on your phone, but most of them appear to be quiz or trivia based. Seeing this grand narrative, from creation to crucifixion, in game form feels both novel and inevitable, how you might imagine seeing the gospel story be put on film for the first time. “Throughout history, Christians have created, shaped and used technology for God’s glory” the Discipleship Tech website tells us; seen in that light, using a mobile game to deliver the gospel is simply the next step in a line of technological use that stretches back to the invention of the codex.

Although the game has only been in development for just over four years, it’s had a much longer gestation period than that. “It's an idea I've had for about 20 years now,” says project leader, Andy Geers, “I grew up playing lots of computer games and knowing Jesus and getting to know the Bible better… So I kind of thought: wouldn't it be great if we could combine those two things?” Geers says that the catalyst for this game was a research project. According to the Bible Society’s Lumino research project, a quarter of the UK population are "open to the Bible and finding out more". The Serpent & The Seed is Geers’ way of meeting that need.

This is clearly a labour of love for all involved and it shows. The dialogue sparkles with cheeky irreverence at times thanks to scriptwriting from Amy Green (BAFTA-winning writer/developer of That Dragon Cancer, the video game centring on the loss of her infant son, Joel). Ostensibly aimed for players ‘9+’, the narrative has to dance around some of the more unpleasant parts of the Old Testament, which it does so lightly and humorously. At one point in the Garden of Eden level, Adam tells our robin character Mungo, that naming things is hard work, and he needs a rest. Mungo then ponders whether Adam has any idea what hard work is! The framing narrative of talking animals in a world full of thistles and thorns ruled by an evil tyrant has shades of Narnia, which may have been an unconscious influence and is very much appreciated.

One particular highlight is the musical interludes. The developers aimed for the music to be a leading character in this mobile game, and the score was composed by song-writing duo Poor Bishop Hooper. When you unlock another chapter in the game, the almost transcendent songs kick in, combined with the logo appearing in its beautiful lettering, creating an enjoyable experience. It also features music from Canadian artist Jim Guthrie, whose Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP was something of an inspiration for the atmosphere of the whole game.

The game appears to be connecting with the public, many of whom are praising its art design. Greg Clifton’s illustrations are soothing and light-hearted (I’m pretty sure Moses is rocking an awesome quiff). “It seems to be pitched as a chilled, interactive story with some minor puzzle solving, a subgenre that is increasingly popular these days,” writes gamer and RS teacher Natalie Minaker. “I imagine that this game can provide a few hours of mental respite to any stressed-out Christians!”

Unfortunately, the lack of challenge is hard to avoid mentioning. As this game is telling a very well-established story, there’s very little jeopardy and as a result, the pace lags a little in parts. “The gameplay is gentle and seems to promote a sense of mindfulness rather than any real sense of peril or challenge,” continues Minaker. In certain levels there are Christian themed takes on popular mobile games - Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, and even Snake (which will be a pang of nostalgia for those of us who had a Nokia in the 90s). What is clear is that playability takes a back seat to story here, and when that story is the Bible, that’s understandable. There’s also a distinctly estuary English accent to the voices shouting “hosanna” as Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey which might momentarily take you out of the story, but this is merely nitpicking.

Whether it will effectively compete for pre-teens’ attention in a saturated market remains to be seen, but this is another useful tool to have in a kids or youth leader’s toolkit. It might also serve as the kind of homework an RE teacher could set that the students might enjoy completing! Older gamers or committed Christians might not find much of the content particularly revelatory, but they may find its gentle pace and soothing aesthetics a welcome addition to the emerging ‘cosy games’ genre.

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Article

Digital

Work

24 January 2025

4 min read

Back to the office! The suspect motives behind the bosses calling for it

Working From Home isn’t the end of the world.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

An office wall displays a huge motto reading 'punch today in the face'

Really?

Johnson Wang on Unsplash.

If we’d been working from home in 1980, I wouldn’t have met my wife (as she, of course, then wasn’t). The slow demise of the office romance may not exclusively be driven by WFH, when a clumsy or unwanted speculative pass will likely precipitate a visit from the HR police. But it’s sure harder (I’m told) to chat someone up over Zoom than a water-cooler.

There are some things you just, well, have to be there for. And it’s not just a matter of curating the gene pool for the future of the human race, which is hardly the top priority for most employers. Much more immediate commercial demands are served by employees being bodily present at work. They can check colleagues’ body language, be mentored more spontaneously, gossip about work, read the room and go outside for a fag with a friend. None of that works on a laptop at the kitchen table.

And yet these aren’t aspects of working life that are much, if ever, cited by opponents of WFH. Yup, for these bosses, it’s always about productivity, which allegedly slumps like the shoulders of a college-leaver told to re-write their CV, when staff work from home. So companies as diverse as Amazon, Boots and JP Morgan are demanding that their workers work five-day weeks at the office again.

Except, two things: One, that productivity point isn’t true. Professor Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, has demonstrated empirically that a hybrid working model of three days at the office, plus two at home, is every bit as productive as fully office-based work overall. And, two, bosses may be shocked to learn that it’s their job to manage productivity, which is just as measurable at home as in the office. But then you don’t get to shout as much.

And there I think is the real point. Bosses might not be shouty, but their motives for office work are more than suspect. They may be obsessed with control. They need to see their staff working for them for proof of productivity. They want to sit in a big glass-walled office watching them. And, perhaps most of all, if staff aren’t in the office then what’s the point of being a boss? It might bring their own productivity management and role into sharper focus.

People who are privileged to manage their own time, or lack of it, in an office really shouldn’t be in the business of lecturing people who are not.

Furthermore, it’s been a long time, if ever, since some of those with the loudest voices calling for a return to the office have ever worked an ordinary job themselves. Lord Rose, formerly CEO of Marks & Spencer and chairman of Asda, told BBC’s Panorama that home working was part of the UK economy’s “general decline” (not true – see above).

And Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, formerly business secretary (remind me, how did that go?), continues in opposition to fight the bad fight to get civil servants as well as the private sector permanently back at the office. Hilariously, he most recently did so in a video from the drawing room of his mansion in Somerset. Though, to be fair, having lost his seat at the last general election and seeing his investment company sliding down the pan, he’s not so much working from home as just... at home.

The serious point is that people who are privileged to manage their own time, or lack of it, in an office really shouldn’t be in the business of lecturing people who are not. They really don’t know – or have forgotten - what it is to have your life demanded of you from 9am-6pm from Monday to Friday in a location that is less than comfortable to work in. Is that so complicated to take aboard?

And there’s another very big thing here. To demand office slaves is to commoditise people, to make them chattels (and, if some of these bosses were honest with themselves, that’s what they want). Staff become just another asset, not unlike the freehold of the office building in which you put them and watch as they make you money every day.

To put it bluntly, that is a sin. To treat human beings as tradeable commodities is to debase their dignity. And for those of faith, that dignity is vested in each unique one of them bearing the image of God. As a good Catholic, Rees-Mogg should be familiar with the doctrine of Imago Dei.

So there’s a holy, as well as secular, work-ethic at play here. The worker is worthy of his/her wage. That scriptural phrase usually focuses on the material value of the wage. But it’s also worth registering that the worker is “worthy”.

To treat staff like they have an inherent worth, rather than simply a productive asset, has a value way beyond the money they are paid. And the dividends on that investment will be immense. Respect them. Let them work from home.

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