Announcing the 2026 Microgrant Awardees
After careful review of an impressive pool of applications, we've selected four exceptional projects to receive Shine A Light Gaming Microgrant awards. Each awardee will receive $4,000 to advance their work in making gaming more welcoming, inclusive, and human for everyone.
These projects represent different approaches to the same goal: expanding who gets to belong in gaming, addressing harm before it takes root, and creating pathways for underrepresented voices to shape the future of the industry.
Sorghum & Spear
SUBSUME | Building HBCU Pathways into Gaming
Sorghum & Spear is an Afrofuturist storytelling project created by Dedren Snead that builds an African cultural narrative within a richly imagined fantasy universe spanning comics, graphic novels, and planned animation. Drawing on historical research, mythology, and diasporic traditions, the story centers young women called to defend and guide their communities in times of conflict. The project combines speculative world-building with culturally grounded storytelling, using fantasy as a way to explore identity, heritage, leadership, and the transmission of ancestral knowledge.
Sorghum & Spear is produced by Subsume, an Afrofuturist game development initiative that empowers HBCU students to create playable experiences grounded in art, culture, and technology. Through partnerships with Unity, Unreal Engine, and the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the program provides professional tools, mentorship, and industry visibility for emerging creators. Students collaborate across disciplines to design and prototype games that place Black and diasporic narratives at the center of gameplay and world-building. The initiative demonstrates how culturally rooted storytelling can drive both creative innovation and greater equity in the games industry.
Impact: For emerging developers, especially at HBCUs, Subsume delivers real portfolio work, mentorship, and accessibility best practices tied to IGDA guidance. Students enter the industry already fluent in inclusive design and harassment-free community standards.
Grant Use: Launch an IGDA-affiliated student chapter focused on inclusive Afrofuturist game development, produce at least one Sorghum & Spear vertical slice or micro-game, and create a documented accessibility and inclusion checklist for future cohorts.
ReSpawn Foundation
Making Adaptive Gaming Part of Rehabilitation
ReSpawn Foundation is a 501(c)(3) making adaptive gaming part of rehabilitation. They help people with disabilities play the games they love by training therapists, equipping hospitals, and building supportive gaming communities.
By connecting players, clinicians, and developers, ReSpawn fosters empathy, representation, and safer, more inclusive gaming spaces. Their work expands who belongs in gaming and promotes the values that align with creating harassment-free communities.
Impact: ReSpawn makes play accessible to people with disabilities after injury, helping players regain access through adaptive technology and inclusive game design. They create welcoming spaces free from stigma or harassment, showing that everyone deserves to belong in gaming.
Grant Use: Fund adaptive gaming events where players with disabilities can game together using accessible setups, meet others, and build community. Funds will cover adaptive gear, travel, and outreach so more players can experience connection, confidence, and joy through play.
Dualplex
Telling Veterans' Stories Through a Non-Combat Lens
Dualplex is developing a narrative game in partnership with Veterans Breakfast Club that retells real veterans' stories. The project follows experiences both during enlistment and through mental health journeys as far as 50 years after service.
Told from the perspective of a combat photographer rather than a soldier, the game challenges conventional war game tropes. PTSD, family repair, and community connection are primary themes, giving space for reflection on deeper narratives and more human approaches to storytelling in this genre.
Impact: The project brings non-gamers into the gaming space through an accessible narrative with simple controls. Gamers receive direct connection to real veterans and associated groups they can support, bridging community gaps and encouraging long-term interest in veteran affairs.
Grant Use: Support character modeling and rigging, commissioning 2-4 high quality models that can carry development through the initial alpha build and early marketing materials. This gives the team a framework to develop variants more easily.
Mind Faux
Sugar Gamers Labs | Building Media Literacy Through Play
Mind Faux is an immersive transmedia project designed to strengthen media literacy and critical thinking through play. It combines an augmented reality card game, an episodic video game built in Unreal Engine, and in-person social deception events.
Across these formats, players learn to identify propaganda tactics, cognitive biases, and manipulation strategies in a creative, collaborative way. The project addresses how harm and extremism take root by helping people recognize when perception, trust, and bias are being weaponized.
Impact: Mind Faux offers a safe space to explore manipulation and misinformation without shame or hostility. By gamifying these concepts, players learn self-awareness and digital resilience, helping reduce the spread of misinformation and toxicity both in and outside of games.
Grant Use: Support community events and workshops that create intentional third spaces where players can connect, learn, and reflect together. Funds will go toward hosting inclusive play sessions, facilitator training, and accessible materials to engage underserved communities.
These projects exemplify the innovation, executional readiness, and social impact we sought in our first microgrant round. We look forward to supporting their development and sharing their progress throughout 2026.
Thank you for being part of our mission to make gaming a more inclusive and welcoming space.
