Design Journal
Room 062: Reflection
January 2025 · Studio Shade
Some of my rooms are built around an idea. Some are built around a memory. Reflection was built around a person.
If you’re not up for a sad story right now, you may want to go.
Origins
Room 062 at Studio Shade XIV was created in memory of my friend Michael, known near the end of his life by his in-game name, Tukken. It is one of the most personal rooms I have made, because it carries more than a design concept. It carries grief, friendship, nostalgia, and more than twenty years of shared history across games, websites, servers, and worlds.
I met Michael when I was eleven years old.
At the time, I was dealing with the suicide of my father and looking for somewhere else to be. Like a lot of kids who grew up online, I found escape in games. For me, that escape started with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. Those games led me to Zelda fansites, back when the internet still felt small and strange and full of hidden corners.
Through that community, I made friends. Eventually, a few of us started playing Graal, and that is where I met Michael.
He was two years older than me, kind in a way that felt rare even then, and somehow already wise for his age. He had this old-soul quality about him. He was also the first person I ever heard with a British accent, we laughed a lot comparing words, their meaning, and our two very different lives.
Back then, we had a small group of friends. Like most online friend groups, people drifted in and out over time. Some disappeared. Some stayed. Like Michael (never Mike).
Our friendship carried on for more than twenty years, across different games and different versions of ourselves. We played Shaiya, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and probably more worlds than I can even remember clearly now. Time passed. Life happened. We grew up. But every so often, we would find our way back to each other.
Then came 2024
By that point, I had not spoken with Michael in a year or two. I was working in technical support for a game server hosting provider, helping customers with tickets every day. Out of thousands of customers, across multiple support agents online at the same time, one ticket randomly landed in my queue.
It was his.
Not his username. His government name.
I remember staring at it, completely stunned. The odds felt impossible. After all that time, after all those games, after all the ways people can disappear from each other online, he had somehow landed directly in my support queue.
When I got off work that night, I messaged him on Facebook.
We caught up. We laughed. We stayed in touch for a while. It felt like no time had passed at all, which is one of the strange gifts of long friendships. You can go quiet for years, then suddenly you are right back where you left off.
His death and the room's design
One of the last things I got to share with him was the studio’s first website and Discord community. I did not know then that it would be one of the last pieces of my life he would get to see.
In January of 2025, Michael passed away suddenly.
His sister posted the details of his memorial on his Facebook page. I do not know how to describe seeing that except to say it felt like being kicked in the chest. It did not feel real. It still does not, sometimes.
In my grief, I messaged him on Discord. A few days later, his name lit up with a response. For one impossible second, I thought it was him. Then I read the message. His sister confirmed that he had passed.
That moment is hard to put into words. The happiness of seeing his name appear. The sickness of realizing all over again that he was really gone. The finality of it.
I wrote back to thank her for telling me, and to tell her that Michael had been a great friend for more than twenty years.
Reflection was built after that.
The room is inspired by the cliffs in one of the very first levels where Michael and I spent time together. It was one of those early online places that probably looked simple from the outside, but to us, it was a world, a meeting place, and memory. It was a small piece of internet history where friendships formed before we fully understood how much they would matter.
It isn’t a perfect recreation. Not really a monument in the traditional sense. More like an echo? A place shaped by the feeling of those old cliffs, those early friendships, and the strange way games can hold pieces of people long after they are gone.
For me it is about looking back, but also about seeing what remains: The friendships we carry. The versions of ourselves that still live in old games and old usernames. The people who helped us survive things they may never have fully understood.
About this room
Ward 4 Plot 35
Last updated: January 2025
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