Projects
The Road To Yondolfa
Overview:
One of my very first freelance projects that I'm still involved with today. Follows two brothers from their village of Strumpton across the "Known" as they seek help for their home from a far off kingdom. Simultaneously follows the princess of an invading kingdom, and her reckoning with her nation's violent history. Though it's a fairly mechanically straightforward semi-branching visual novel, I nevertheless think it is a very special project given the subject matter that it tackles in comparison with many other visual novels. War, racism, marginalization, and cycles of cruelty are all dealt with, but are right next to moments of hope, familial love, and communities deciding that they owe each other something. A real treat for someone like me who wishes to tell political stories that are realistic yet hopeful.
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Contributions:
- Write dialogue for NPCs and Player characters, create branching narrative paths in Ren’Py based on player’s decisions. 10,000+ lines and counting of dialogue and descriptions
- Write detailed scene descriptions down to framing of shots, character expressions, and tone of voice lines.
- Develop design documents for cities and other major locations for the writing and art teams.
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Tools Used: Ren'Py, Docs
Fallout: Miami
Overview: Fallout: Miami is an overhaul mod for Fallout 4, set in the post-apocalypic "Vacation Wasteland" of Miami. The mod's word is focused imagining the swamps and beaches of the Miami area, as well as it's modern people, cultures, and groups, adapted to the tropes and themes of the Fallout universe.
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Writer Contributions:
- Worked with the Lead writer and the rest of the writing team to write characters, side-quests, item descriptions and barks.
- Particularly important was the incorporation of true player choice; decisions the player makes and quests the complete affects the players reputation with factions, thereby affecting quests and NPCS in the future.
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Level Designer Contributions:
- Wrote and followed documentation about where to place assets and shape terrain in the exterior world.
- Designed exterior areas with the intention to ensure they all had one interesting story to piece together or one interesting thing for the player to uncover.
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Tools used: Unreal 5, Bethesda Creation Kit, Articy:draft​​
Yokai Hunter
Overview:
Created for the 2023 Boss Rush Game Jam. A 2D sidescrolling boss rush that game follows a protagonist given the power to "fly" via a magical grappling hook by a spirit, in order to take vengeance on various other spirits, each inspired by a particular Yokai of Japanese Mythology. One of the main ideas was that the player would use their "grapple" ability where a souls-like game would usually be built around a dodge. While the implementation of the mechanics was more than a little clunky, I still found the project very valuable to learn from as I got to design and code behavior trees for three bosses (each, I think, more fun than the last), and it gave me more direct experience directing an artist and musician in creating animations and music to fit both the player and the bosses.
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Contributions:
- Lead a small game team composed of an artist, and musician, and myself.
- Wrote documentation, assigned and tracked tasks to keep the team on schedule over the course of the month.
- Developed all features of the game, designed boss behavior trees, and placed art assets in each level, wrote all dialogue.
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Tools used: Unity, Trello, Photoshop
The Spread of Corruption
Overview:
A 2D turn based rogue-like dungeon crawler made for the 2023 Cosmic Horrors Game Jam. About an adventurer surviving a dungeon overrun by the force of "Corruption;" the player is continuously corrupted as they strengthen themselves in their struggle to survive. The mechanics are pretty simple, and my main goal here was experimenting with implementing procedurally generated levels, enemies and items placement, and designing mechanics around that. It's fairly successful at being what it is, but what it is is is certainly fairly straightforward.
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Contributions:
- Designed, developed, and implemented all characters, items, UI, and dialogue.
- Created procedural generation algorithms for randomized but cohesive levels
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Tools used: Unity
Cerulis
Overview:
A 2D platformers game following the journey of a "Seeker" in the retro-futurist magical city of Nova Cerulis. Beyond being a fairly traditional platformer, the game's core feature game's core feature is the use of mundane items –such as water or silver powders– to counter the magical abilities of foes. Based on a few TTRPG session I ran with a group of friends, I worked with that group to create this prototype over a summer.
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Contributions:
- Worked with a team of 5 developers, designers, and artists by writing documentation, managing and tracking tasks, and reviewing code/levels/art.
- Developed and implemented many core features of the game, ranging from movement to use of items, to enemy behavior.
- Designed and blocked out 7 levels using both open source assets and assets created by the team.
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Tools used: Unity, Twine, Photoshop