The idea to create a spooky ’80s narrative puzzle about two kids who head out after dark to see a movie came straight from Faisal Sethi’s childhood—a large part of which was spent watching movies and reading stories about mischievous kids. So it was only natural that one of the main characters in The Get Out Kids, Salim, would come from a family like Sethi’s.

Sethi grew up in Saskatchewan with Pakistani immigrant parents who fussed over him to do his math homework and say his prayers—something he replicates in the game’s dialogue as Salim’s parents pester him at bedtime, his dad quizzing him about perpendicular bisectors and his mom nagging him to “stop playing video-shideo games!”

Reflecting on his childhood, Sethi says, “I was always stuck between the culture I had at home that they brought over, and this culture, that I was born and bred in Canada.”

Sethi invites players into that world, with the game’s interactive 3D dioramas that let you see inside the space and open drawers in Salim’s bedroom to find objects that Sethi had in his own room—from a rock cassette tape to a Muslim prayer mat.

Though the eerie mystery that emerges in The Get Out Kids is nothing but fictional fun, the autobiographical details sprinkled throughout create a richly developed character whose life is shaped by South Asian culture.

For Sethi, making The Get Out Kids wasn’t about representing a South Asian character, it was just about creating a story from his own lived experience. But, among the many other games he’s released on the App Store through his company Frosty Pop, he has made a concerted effort to create diverse characters for one main reason: his daughter.

“I remember growing up, playing Smurf, Pong, Defender, or NHL ’94—whatever it may be—there were not a lot of female front-facing characters. Definitely not a lot of South Asian characters, if any,” says Sethi.

“Because I didn’t have these things growing up, I didn’t see myself in these games. I want to make sure that she sees herself in these things and is like, ‘I can do that; I can compete with anybody.’”

Frosty Pop’s Big Time Sports is built on this very idea. The game allows you to choose from a host of events, including basketball, skating, cycling, and weightlifting, to compete for a high score. The thick-limbed, small-headed athletes look nothing like your typical Olympian, though, and the game preselects your player for you.

“The physical attributes that we typically associate with sports people are irrelevant in this game,” says Sethi. “There’s a conscious effort to make everybody the same to some degree in terms of body shape.”

Another Frosty Pop title, Kings of the Castle, tasks players with collecting gems and avoiding obstacles in order to save a prince who is being held hostage by a dragon. Though the game predates his daughter, Sethi credits his nieces for inspiring him to make the princess the hero of the game.

“There was a conscious decision to flip the script. It’s not the prince saving the princess, it’s the princess saving the prince,” he says.

Sethi also included a range of cultures and races within the game. “There’s a character with a hijab, there’s an East Asian character, there’s an African character, there are some with blue eyes—it’s all over the map. And I think that was the first time I was saying, ‘Let’s do this, because I want my nieces to play and see themselves in a video game.’”

For Sethi, creating incredible art is always the objective of whatever game he creates. After all, he started his career creating designs for print and digital media, and originally went into gaming with the goal to “make a game that feels like a poster.”

But for him, creating games that are inclusive comes down to making art that will resonate more deeply. “As a creator, you think: Does it make the story better? Does it make the game better?”

“I want people to pick up a Frosty Pop game and feel connected to it in multiple ways,” says Sethi. One of those ways might be through cultural touchpoints.

“The world is complicated and big and messy and has a bunch of different people in it,” he says. Reflecting that complexity in what he creates is of great importance to him. “I think it’s better storytelling, it’s better games, it’s better art,” says Sethi. “And it matters culturally.”