The Nobody Hole: Immersive Hip-Hop Videogame Experience

📍 Los Angeles, CA (US)

🏷️ Video Games

THE DREAMY FLASHBACK

The story of The Nobody Hole begins twenty years ago, in the winter of 2005. Brooklyn, NYC. That year, a group of friends and room mates stumbled into another dimension with their beats, rhymes, poetry, songs and paintings. A dimension where nobody is whole. They spent a year writing and letting the art happen... and in 2006, that dimension came to life on an album called The Nobody Hole....an album we like to think of as a "Halloween hip-hop opera". As a rapper, this was a crowning achievement for me, early in my evolution.....we were off to the races. Even back then, we knew it could be a play, a comic book, an animated series and feature, and even a videogame. We knew the world would see the potential of this world and it would take off immediately. 🤣

THE ACTION PACKED 20 YEAR MONTAGE

The story of the next two decades is too long for this Kickstarter adventure... but the blessing of having to wait for tech and culture to "catch up" is that over all those years that album evolved into many things; an animatic that screened at various venues from Tribeca Grand (NYC) and the Knitting Factory (NYC), to The Last Bookstore (LA); various visual releases; an AI short film in the RunwayML AI Film Festival; and a number of re-releases of the album. We created many new artistic ceremonies and annual celebrations inspired by the project, usually around the Halloween season. Those events were typically called "The Nobody Ball". In the quest to evolve the project, I worked with many visual artists, art directors and character designers... I got to learn the ins and outs of what it would take to build this world. How to actualize a thing, and my limits. Because those .....are a thing.
 

THE PLOT TWIST

Then... quite unexpectedly, in 2025, I was accepted into the GRX Immersive Academy.  There, I found myself with an ultratalented team & creative technologist community, where I was trained to create for the metaverse. In that cohort, I worked with the GRX squad on evolving the project into a videogame demo, while I worked with the music team on updating the music portions (it was 20 years old, after all). 

And here we are. As it always was with the album and visual experiences, music remains the engine of the new game.

THE GAME

In our game, you play the star of The Nobody Hole.....Pygmy Paul, a child pulled into this fractured liminal dimension. It’s a place where lost souls heal and the laws of nature come to question themselves. This place was created at the pen tip of Youth questioning the nature of the Dark. To move forward, you explore our beautiful but hanted environments, solve ancestral riddles, and confront various psychedelic specters and tormentors. The purpose is to find the Sacred Gardens and activate five hidden platonic solids that re-harmonize the Hole's broken energy. You see, Paul is on a shamanic path but doesn't realize it.

So this game is experimental art by design. Hip-hop storytelling binds the narrative together, and we aim to explore new visual mediums through puppetry arts, motion capture, and physical materials... inspired by beautiful games with interesting mechanics, like The Midnight Walk, South of Midnight and Concrete Genie.

WHERE YOU COME IN

Our game blends exploration, puzzle-solving, and some combat, and cinematic storytelling. Of course there is original music driving the pacing and narrative transitions. The tone is closer to a dream you move through than a traditional power fantasy. But to weave all these elements together in a masterful way... that is the work that's ahead of us. It's ambitious. So we need help.

A playable build already exists.  Core environments are live. The systems are real.
So this Kickstarter campaign is about transforming that prototype into a finished legible experience that captures our true vision.

By backing this project, you’re helping an auteur-led game cross the  threshold from rough, early visuals and placeholder systems into something more fully realized: painterly, nuanced, and worthy of the world it’s trying to express.

ABOUT THE GAME CREATOR, SUM

Peace, my name is Roshmond, and many know me as "Sum". I'm an artist. I also move through life professionally as a writer, creative director, strategist and researcher. My body of work reaches through mediums.....music, visuals, data, storytelling, and interactive media. I’ve spent over two decades developing new worlds for myself, and new models of work for the artist class. I've led the charge on a number of long-form projects, carrying them from concept through release across music, film, and digital platforms. 

SUM ON LINKEDIN

My work has been featured across major television, games, and shared cultural spaces. Operating at scale and leading teams is par for course for me, and it's something I love to do. A big part of my evolution has been about nonstop collaboration - with artists, technologists, and institutions on projects that braid artistic practice with research in my unique brew. In parallel, I’ve led and contributed to research initiatives that demystify AI and disinformation, explore new modes of storytelling, and investigate our collective creative systems. I've been known to do this type of work in collaboration with universities and community organizations.

Always keep in mind, I am artist first...so I'm always looking for a laboratory where I can use expression to explore The Great Mysteries. It is from that vantage that I lead my shop, The Kizmet Experience Studio, a lab where I develop worlds inspired by music, liberation, performance and technology. At KZMTx, I oversee projects from vision through execution; and this game is the newest addition to our ecosystem of art and projects. The Nobody Hole is the continuation of a body of work I’ve been building, refining, and protecting for years.

This Kickstarter campaign supports a focused phase of completion, and the culmination of many years of evolution as a creative leader. I’m directly responsible for seeing it through.

WHY KICKSTARTER, WHY NOW?

I chose to launch this campaign now because FINALLY, all the conditions are right! The game has reached a level of development where it is playable, and investable. There is a clear market space for what it is becoming. At the same time, we have genuine external interest from leaders in the space who want to support the project. This creates momentum I feel we should act on with intent and precision. 

I also recognize that I needed time to grow into the kind of leader a project of this scope requires; someone capable of holding vision, production, and responsibility with an even hand. Kickstarter made sense for us because it offers a community. They seem to appreciate creative work in progress, and value intentional, art-led projects. This allows me to bring that community together with the family of supporters I’ve spent years building on my own. This campaign offers a way to focus that momentum, and move decisively into the next phase of this project's evolution.

And my next artistic era....notching "game creator & developer" on my belt. 

Welcome to my biggest plot twist yet. Thank you for your support!

🐉SUM🐉