The book
Words for a pain that resists them
A free, first-hand account of living with cluster headaches — written to give the suffering a voice, and to let everyone else glimpse a pain that language can't quite hold.
Journey Through Hell
A true account of living with cluster headaches.
Written by the studio's founder
Talking to others outside is like trying to explain a full-colored picture using only black and white. You can sketch the outlines, the shapes, the order of things — but the warmth of the reds, the depth of the blues, the sickness in the greens — all of it is lost.
The premise
A first-person account of life with extreme, refractory cluster headaches — one of the most severe pains known to medicine. Written to put into words a suffering that resists language: for the patients who can't, and for everyone else, so they can grasp that such magnitudes of pain are real. Free to read.
The chapters
Six chapters, one descent.
Hints, not summaries. The rest waits inside the book.
- I
Into the Fire
The first months of a brutal war…
- II
Alone in Hell
The isolation, and the rage at a world that cannot see…
- III
Building a Garden
If you find yourself in hell…
- IV
What the Fire Makes of You
How torturous pain reshapes who you are…
- V
The Turning
When the war begins to turn, and what you learn…
- VI
The Change
The harvest is not weapons…
Why it exists
Why this book exists
Why it's written
To give words to a pain that resists them — for the patients who can't put it into language, and for everyone else, so they can grasp that such magnitudes of pain are real.
Free, always
It exists to reach people, not to earn. No price, no paywall — there to be read whenever it's needed, including at 3 a.m. in the middle of an attack.
One hand on the page
Written alone, from lived experience and not research — a single voice that has actually been where the pages go.
From the same fire
The book and the games come from one place.
This book and the studio's games come from one place. The fight with cluster headaches became, in its own strange way, fuel — it sharpened the will to build, and it seeded worlds. One game still taking shape, Gardener in Hell, feels pulled straight from these pages. The pain didn't make the games. But it's a large part of why they got made.
From the same fire
Gardener in Hell
Tend a garden where nothing should grow.
In development