Narrative Design
Interactive
Brinkmanship is a first-person sci-fi thriller about a colony ship gone mysteriously off course. I directed a team of more than 20 people to create a deeply-branching, fully voice-acted experience for my MFA thesis using Unity and Yarn Spinner. I lead our four person writing team to create unique and interconnected characters who each hold a piece of the puzzle.
When it came to the game’s dramatic conclusion, I wanted to make sure gameplay actions were just as meaningful as dialogue choices. The player is given a gun with 7 bullets, and what they do with it when they get to the bridge is up to them.
Check out an in-depth devlog about my approach to writing the game’s endings here.
As an example, the table to the right is what I called the argument/tension matrix. I used it to help me think through the results of the three general tacks, or arguments, the player can take in Brinkmanship’s climax crossed with the possible actions they can perform to escalate the overall tension of the scene. If you try to convince the captain with facts and logic, for example, but you’ve already squeezed off a few rounds, he and the ship’s pilot will never believe you.
And if you’re really curious, you can flick through my thesis defense slideshow here (sorry for the lack of speaker notes), or read my thesis paper, Brinkmanship and the Process of Narrative Design.
Canyons is a horizontal prototype for a much larger idea. Created as a feature game for my grad-school applications, Canyons represents a manageable chunk of something that would otherwise take many people several years to make.
For this game, I integrated Yarn Spinner with Unity to create a deeply customizable dialogue system that was immensely satisfying to use. This Canyons world exploration is a resource management game driven by the story of two friends on a mission. With the galaxy-wide Maelstrom Cup only ten days away, it's up to the player to guide CH1-P and Hasron towards finding valuable scrap that generates as many memories and conversations as it does income.
You can also check out the game design doc I kept while updating the game.
And take a look at the Scrap List spreadsheet or scroll around below for some insight into how I balanced the game and created assets. The scrap list was downloaded as a .csv then converted to .json, I then imported the .json file with a custom C# script and generated the game’s loot with that info.
Below is a deck outlining the world, narrative arc, and gameplay of the main Canyons concept.
Jimi Stine’s Zapper
“Jimi Stine’s Zapper” is a post-postmodern video game, presenting itself at first as an arcade game, then as a voice-over driven game, then as something else altogether. “Zapper” is a game about ego, art, and the performance of creation. The script is linked above, and the game itself can be played here.
Plenty Time Yet
"Plenty Time Yet" is a piece of interactive fiction. I wrote it in Ink, HTML, and CSS. It is about the strange being familiar, and the familiar becoming monstrous. Can the lost still love? Are the loved ever lost?
This piece has many different sources of inspiration. Goya’s paintings of the Giant and the Colossus created the mood and visual style I had in mind while writing. The spare prose of Cormac McCarthy and the dreamy, quotidian dialogue of Annie Baker were similarly influential.
Video
Represented here are 3 interviews I shot, edited, conducted, and produced as part of a cross country road-trip to highlight artists' relationships with nature.
In addition there are 2 trailers for works made by the incredibly talented team at Planeta that I was lucky enough to edit.