GAMING LIFE
Meet the ‘giggle sisters’
June's Journey
Find objects & solve a mystery
If you ask Patricia Yockey and Leona Hanssa what unites them across oceans – from the US to Belgium – they’ll tell you it’s their shared mantra: ‘a giggle a day keeps the doctor away’.
Indeed, Yockey and Hanssa are well-known within the June’s Journey community as the ‘giggle sisters’ – providing a chuckle as players of this detective adventure game talk about their hobby and share images of the islands they’ve created in-game.
It started when Patricia changed her Facebook and in-game profile picture to show her wearing June’s red hat. She got talking to Leona through a June’s Journey Facebook group and they started sharing their own fan fiction stories about the game’s characters.
One of their favourite things to do is adding photos of themselves into the game, creating silly collages of them meeting love interest Jack Hayes.
June’s Journey quickly became more than just a game to the duo. It is a creative outlet, a way to forget about worries, big and small. And they have helped others in the game’s community, too.
“When you get someone saying ‘Thank you, we just needed a good laugh, because we had a hard day today’, that puts a smile on your face,” says Hanssa. “Because then we know we’ve made this person feel special.”
Yockey even reveals that other players have even created “videos of appreciation” for the twosome.
They have learned about different cultures along the way too, because players encourage each other to decorate their islands in a way that represents them.
June’s Journey quickly became more than just a game to the duo. It is a creative outlet, a way to forget about worries, big and small.
“The game and its fans are letting you learn so many new things,” says Hanssa. “From names and objects in the scenes that we never heard of before, to places you’ve had never seen.”
And now the giggle sisters have decided to go on a journey themselves. They will meet in person for the first time later this year when US native Yockey flies over to visit a mutual friend in the UK, before hopping over to Belgium to meet Hanssa.
Together, they intend to see locations from the game, meet up with other June’s Journey players and visit the offices of the game’s developer Wooga in Berlin, Germany.
“Having fun, laughing, connecting with people from all over the world – for me, all of this is a journey, one with a lot of value,” adds Hanssa.