Jeeyon Shim

Jeeyon Shim is a second generation Korean American game designer and writer. A former outdoor educator, her body of work is strongly influenced by themes of connection to the natural world. Playing Shim's narrative games often involves creating a keepsake artifact. 
== Career ==
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Shim was made redundant from her outdoor education job and pivoted to "full-time game design in 2020". She is the co-designer on Field Guide To Memory (2021) with Shing Yin Khor. Field Guide to Memory centers on the creation of a journal through guided writing prompts with occasional live action mechanics, such as going on a hike in real life to echo a fictional hike experienced by the characters in-game. Field Guide to Memory won the 2021 IndieCade Award in the best live game category. The Verge highlighted that "the pair defined keepsake games as both a genre and a useful shorthand for their work". Academics Greg Loring-Albright and Wes Willison highlighted that while Shim and Khor coined the term "keepsake game" in 2021, the collaborators have slightly different definitions with Shim "more interested in thematic concerns [...]. If Khor delimits how a keepsake game's keepsake object comes to be, Shim explores what that object is meant to do or mean. [...] Khor approaches the material keepsake object and works backwards through its procedural creation to its co-authors: the game designer and the player. Shim starts with the process and its intended thematics and situates the keepsake object as a result of those processes". 
Shim is the creator of other keepsake games such as The Shape of Shadows, The Last Will and Testament of Gideon Blythe, and The Snow Queen which were all funded via crowdfunding campaigns. The Snow Queen is a game for two players, loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. It adapts the game mechanics of Chess. Shim was awarded the inaugural Diana Jones Emerging Designer Award in 2021. In 2022, Shim was nominated for "Designer of the Year" in the inaugural Tabletop Awards by Dicebreaker at PAX Unplugged. 
Linda Codega, for Io9 in 2022, stated that they are an Shim has published on Itch.io which are In 2023, Codega included Shim on a list of "people to follow" in the "Year Ahead in Tabletop Roleplaying Games" – they described Shim as "an innovative and fresh voice in tabletop design" pursing sustainable and independent game design with "nearly a dozen games [released] over the past three years". 
== Personal life ==
Shim was born in the United States and currently lives in Northern California, where she's spent the majority of her life.
Shim developed Long COVID in 2022.Shim, Jeeyon (2022). "Jeeyon's Post-COVID Syndrome Fund". GoFundMe. Retrieved March 21, 2023. "In May, I contracted COVID-19 after managing to successfully mitigate my risk and avoiding the virus for over two years. Now, I have a post-COVID syndrome diagnosis (also known as 'long covid')"
== Works ==
Title 	Credits 	Date	Notes 	
Pin Feathers/Cloud Studies 	Designer 	2018	Included on SFWA's 2018 Nebula Awards reading list 	
Wait For Me 	Co-designer 	2020	Funded via Kickstarter campaign in 2020 	
The Thaw 	Designer 	2021	Included in the Hibernation Games anthology; funded via Kickstarter in 2021 	
Sea of Legends: Rise of the Ancients 	Adventure writer	2021	Board game expansion published by Guildhall Studios; funded via Kickstarter in 2020	
Field Guide to Memory 	Co-designer 	2021	Funded via Kickstarter campaign in 2021 	
The Shape of Shadows 	Designer 	2021	Funded via Kickstarter campaign in 2021 	
The Last Will and Testament of Gideon Blythe	Designer 	2023	Forthcoming game funded via Kickstarter campaign in 2021 	
The Snow Queen 	Designer 	2023	Forthcoming game funded via independent crowdfunding campaign in 2022 	
The Longest Rest 	Designer 	2024	Forthcoming game funded via Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in 2022 	
Category:American people
Category:Game designers
Category:Writers
Category:Outdoor educators