please tell me you love me (2022)

Can you admit your crush before the world ends? Chatbox-based interactive fiction set just before an MMO's servers shut down forever.
Playtime of about 5 minutes.

Skills: dialogue, characterisation, narrative design, unconventional constraints, inkle's Ink

For dying MMO jam. Featured in Polygon.

GIRLKILLER (covet) (2023)

There is a girl who looks like you. Today is the day you're going to kill her. Erotic queer body horror in an illustrated interactive fiction wrapper.
Playtime of 10-15 minutes.

Skills: writing, dialogue, narrative design, Twine

Shortlisted in the Queer Games Festival Awards. Featured in the Queer Games Bundle 2023.

Horse Girl (2021)

Solo journaling TTRPG where you live out a horse girl movie by rolling dice to bond with your wily horse.

Skills: game design, narrative design, system design, tabletop design, documentation

For One-Page RPG Jam 2021.

Vigile (2021)

Mystery interactive fiction game set in Roman Britain amidst a burgeoning coup by druids against the Roman state.

Skills: game design, narrative design, documentation, programming in Ink, teamwork

Materials: Demo, game design document

Fatebreaker (2020)

Dark fantasy action-roleplaying game about a chosen one who shirks their destiny and dooms the world.

Skills: worldbuilding, game design, narrative design, level design, documentation, teamwork

Materials: World bible, narrative design document, level design document, interactive dialogue excerpt

Turning Back (2019)

Walking sim with mystery-solving mechanics, time travel, queer girls and sisterhood.

Skills: game design, core loop design, documentation, presentation

Materials: Core, meta & compulsion loop presentation

You can find more playables on my itch.io page.

Playable prototype and design document

THE GAME: In the midst of a burgeoning revolution against the Romanisation of Britain, the player, a Roman Vigile, has to investigate sudden, unexplained disappearances and discover clues about the coming coup. The Vigile explores towns, interviews villagers and puts together information to solve cases, described in interactive fiction of a similar nature to 80 Days. It is heavily inspired by detective games like Disco Elysium, with a side of resource and time management designed to feel like balancing the fate of a country on the edge of a knife.MY ROLE: I was the solo programmer, and I made the game in Ink, as well as editing for consistency and grammar and writing some dialogue (in-between bits like shops, sleeping and the hospital, as well as interactions with the governor, which were really fun to write). The game design and ideas were a group effort; my individual sections are labelled in the design document.WHAT I LEARNT: Chiefly, Ink as a language - I had a great time with it, especially since it's a narrative language designed for use in other engines and I managed to wrangle it to track time, location, resources and sleep in just Ink itself! These might've been handled engine-side in the full game, but considering we stuck to Ink for the prototype, I'm pretty proud of myself. I also, in the process, learnt what storylets were, and even managed my own system for them in Ink. I think the most important and rewarding part, though, was working with a team on a longer project. It's so nice to have a team together, and it makes it a lot easier when you have to choose which mechanics to cut to make the game genuinely good!

• Play the Demo
• View Design Document
• Return to Portfolio

One-Page Solo Journaling RPG

Horse Girl is an ode to the stereotypical horse girl books and movies that captivate many young people. Although I myself was never a horse person, I was obsessed with a lot of other things - dragons, deities, my dog Bobbi who I was convinced was my witch's familiar - and I love the concept of making something for people to live out those fantasies of having a beloved companion to bond with.This is why, when designing Horse Girl, I tried to make it as fair to the player as possible. I considered, for example, the success/fail rate when rolling: I want the player to succeed, and to have a nice time with their horse, so I made fail, stable, success and critical success results. Being less likely to fail, the player will not only feel better about the ending, but the game experience as a whole. (We have dreams of being the horse girl bonded forever with the horse, not the one who has a tragic ending.) It ensures incredible highs, but no terrible lows. I also made sure to playtest the game to figure out a sweet spot for building tension towards the climax without going on for too long - 12 months ended up being a good middle point between 'probably going to win by then' and 'won't win so soon it feels easy'.

• Download Game
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New Atlantis (2022)

Cinematic horror game set in an underwater resort for billionaires. The player must fight past an army of invisible creatures to escape.

Skills: game design, narrative design, level design, documentation, receiving feedback

Materials: Interactive game design document

Design Document & Mentoring Exercise

THE GAME: New Atlantis is a survival horror game set in an underwater resort for the world's richest people. You play a health and safety officer, known for your discretion, sent to do final checks before the resort officially opens - but something is wrong. Key staff members are missing, areas of the facility are totally locked off, you're given a stun gun for seemingly no reason. One night, your room's emergency alarm malfunctions, and as everyone else escapes, you find yourself alone in the resort with no way out... But are you really alone? Inspired by games like Prey, BioShock, and Horizon: Forbidden West.MY ROLE: As this project was for a mentoring exercise, I designed the entire game myself, and then received feedback from my mentor, Pedro Câmara, a Senior Designer at Unity.WHAT I LEARNT: This whole process was incredibly helpful. For one, the only way to grow as a designer is by getting feedback and working on it, and I think this experience has really prepared me for a future in the industry where I can always strive to keep improving. It also bettered my overarching narrative design skills - I've realised just how important design pillars are not only to my personal design philosophies but also ludonarrative cohesion across a whole project, and how to make them distinct while still forming one whole intended experience. Overall, this has been a great project, and I believe I have come out of it a better designer.

Note: The design document is a work in progress.

• View Design Document
• Return to Portfolio

Playable prototype and design document

THE GAME: In the midst of a burgeoning revolution against the Romanisation of Britain, the player, a Roman Vigile, has to investigate sudden, unexplained disappearances and discover clues about the coming coup. The Vigile explores towns, interviews villagers and puts together information to solve cases, described in interactive fiction of a similar nature to 80 Days. It is heavily inspired by detective games like Disco Elysium, with a side of resource and time management designed to feel like balancing the fate of a country on the edge of a knife.MY ROLE: I was the solo programmer, and I made the game in Ink, as well as editing for consistency and grammar and writing some dialogue (in-between bits like shops, sleeping and the hospital, as well as interactions with the governor, which were really fun to write). The game design and ideas were a group effort; my individual sections are labelled in the design document.WHAT I LEARNT: Chiefly, Ink as a language - I had a great time with it, especially since it's a narrative language designed for use in other engines and I managed to wrangle it to track time, location, resources and sleep in just Ink itself! These might've been handled engine-side in the full game, but considering we stuck to Ink for the prototype, I'm pretty proud of myself. I also, in the process, learnt what storylets were, and even managed my own system for them in Ink. I think the most important and rewarding part, though, was working with a team on a longer project. It's so nice to have a team together, and it makes it a lot easier when you have to choose which mechanics to cut to make the game genuinely good!

• Play the Demo
• View Design Document
• Return to Portfolio

Worldbuilding, narrative design and level design

THE WORLD: A cycle from the beginning of time. A world slowly decaying. A people in danger. In Azlyð, the birth, death and rebirth of the child of the world itself, the Azlyðine, comes every 300 years - until it stops. The Azlyðine refuses their destiny and refuses to sacrifice themselves back to the planet, causing the lost species - creatures from the past corrupted by magical decay - to become more dangerous, threatening humans' existence and the safety of the world.THE GAME: Fatebreaker is an action RPG that mixes the component-based weaponry from Horizon: Zero Dawn and the challenging combat of Dark Souls, requiring precise timing for parries and dodges. This is combined with a skill tree - allowing the player to specialise into heavy attacks or poisons, for example - as well as a complex barter- and service-based economy, a character creator at the beginning, and, importantly, narrative decisions that should make an impact on the game and world.MY ROLE: Sections I wrote in the worldbuilding document are labelled as such. As for the other documents, I designed the game and narrative, then went into level design and writing for the final sections.WHAT I LEARNED: In terms of hard skills, I definitely learnt a lot more about level design than I knew previously; it took me a couple of tries to come up with a genuinely mechanically-interesting level, but in the end, I am very happy with my sunlight-based stealth level, especially the way the map guides the player through and the environmental storytelling (see Level Design Document). I also learnt how hard good narrative design is! I ended up a little unsatisfied with my big narrative choices, largely because it felt difficult to present both options as being as valid as each other, an issue many games with two or three dialogue options run into. In the future, I'm aiming to have a bit more nuance to my moral choices.

• Worldbuilding Document
• Narrative Design Document
• Level Design Document
• Dialogue Excerpt (Updated)
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Core, meta and compulsion loop design

As part of a different assessment, I had to explain why this game fits into particular genres, as well as provide historical context for the genres; you can find my essay on why Turning Back is a graphic adventure game and an empathy game here.

• Return to Portfolio

I also have select nonfiction work available at my Medium account.