Ongoing story: Vim is The Color of Rust and Sun
This is an ongoing series about a scribe-turned-grave-robber (and unreliable narrator) in a far-flung fallen future full of strangeness, mystery, and horrors beyond human comprehension.
Dive into the madness here!
Interactive Fiction:
Interview with an Ichthyologist
I started this as a writing test for a prospective employer and enjoyed it so much that I kept filling it out! The game only takes about 5 minutes to beat, but there's a bajillion different endings. (Seriously, I kind of lost count. Did I mention that you can shield-surf down stairs like Legolas?)
Play the madness on Itch.io!
Temple Run 2 Social Media Promotions
Social media promotions and in-app notifications written in the retro pulp adventure style that I developed for the Temple Run franchise.
See the finalized ads here!
Just read the copy text here!
Game Flavor Text:
Act Intro Quotes
These are quotes that were displayed every time the player started a new act in Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten. These are a fantastice way to hint at a larger world just off the edges of the story!
See the pdf here!
Game Flavor Text:
Armor, Swords, Bows, Staffs
Legendary item descriptions from Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten. I have BIG OPINIONS about item descriptions! My goal with any item description is to tell a tiny, self-contained story. It's an amazing way to make your world feel larger! (I also love doing research on how actual items would function in the real world and then sprinkling it into my items: Gambesons! Lamellar! Anglo-Saxon literary references!)
See the original eye-bleed-inducing spreadsheet here!
See the much more readable pdf here!
Or read my obsessive essay about the art of item descriptions!
Game Dialogue:
Curse on the Bayou
This is a sample of dialogue from Temple Run: Legends for limited time events that offer players self contained stories with special rewards. They could happen at any point, regardless of where the player was in the main game!
Read my post about the process (script included) here.
Just get the script in screenplay format here.
Or get the spreadsheet of all of the limited time event scenes here.
Game Journal Entry:
The Shade Drinker
I think in-game journal pages are an excellent place to tell the little side stories that can't fit into cut scenes. These are two journal entries from Defender's Quest DX that combine to form a single side story.
See the pdf here!
Or read all of the journal entries here!
Defender’s Quest DX New Audience Trailer
This is one of several trailer voiceover scripts that I wrote for the release of Defender's Quest DX.
Watch the trailer here!
Just read the copy text here!
Blog Post: Making a Video Game Cover That Doesn’t Suck
This is an article I wrote for Level Up Labs about the creation process behind the new cover for Defender's Quest DX on consoles.
Read it on Game Developer.
Game Dialogue:
The Royal Records Room
This is a late-game scene from Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten, beginning to reveal the mystery that drove the first half of the game.
Read it here.
Game Dialogue:
Steal Cleopatra’s Throne
This is a lengthy quest from (the now tragically cancelled) Temple Run: Idle Explorers, wherein our heroes find themselves trapped in a lost world outside of time where Cleopatra still rules as a tyrannical God-Queen. Idle Explorers was an idle clicker game where quests may take multiple weeks or even a month to complete, so story scenes are longer than most other games.
Read an amusing snippet here!
Read the whole thing here!
Game Flavor Text:
Robot Bestiary
These are the unit descriptions for the robotic enemies appearing in the tragically canceled Stellar Squad HD port. Every entry is written in the first person perspective of the game's villainous protagonist, a vengeance-obsessed mad scientist clinging to life as a skull floating in a life-support tube.
Read the dastardly details here!
GDC Presentation:
Narrative as Problem-Solving
This is a recording of a presentation that I gave with one of my coworkers at the Game Developer Conference Narrative Summit in 2013.
Watch the video on GDC Vault!
Technical Writing:
Bonus Battle Editor Guide
This is a guide that I wrote for Level Up Labs' bonus level editor with my usual level of enthusiasm.
See it on Steam here!
Technical Writing:
Developer Survey FAQ
This is an FAQ that I wrote while working as a consultant for a game developer survey. It takes the complicated and technical details of how the survey is going to be handled and the participants' anonymity guaranteed and breaks it down in simple, understandable language.
See the pdf here!
UX Design:
Steam Categories Menu
One of the craziest things that I've ever worked on was helping to design the categories menu for the Steam Storefront (69 million daily users!!!) Before this, there was no category browsing menu at all – you had to search for everything with keywords! I got to do all kinds of Knowledge Organization System research I learned all about taxonomy and library science.
Read an article about it here!
Play around with it yourself on the Steam front page!
Stage Play:
Interviewing
This is a stage play that I wrote about a couple of bored alien bureaucrats attempting to justify their annual budget by abducting random people before the end of the fiscal year. Some crazy how, it actually got performed as part of Texas A&M's New Works Festival! Fun fact: the director went on to become the wildly talented Modern Day Midas!
See a pdf of the script here!
Retro Horror Story:
Ten Coins
This is a short horror story that I wrote in the style of the old 1930s pulp magazines! (I got big into pulp stories after working on Temple Run!)
Peer into the horrifying darkness here!
Short Story Series:
Right Hand on the Mountain
These are a couple of dark deadly stories about Right Hand, an orphan adopted by assassins. (These were originally presents for my niece, who is absolutely obsessed with the secret world of ninjas and assassins. They have a parentally approved number of decapitations.)
Right Hand Comes to the Mountain.
Right Hand and the Old Masters.
Tabletop RPG Adventure:
Hot Rain Falls on the Boiling City (Knave 2e)
This won 6th place in the Knave 2e Adventure Game Jam, hosted by Ben Milton (of Questing Beast fame). If you are a fan of old-fashioned dungeon crawls, backstabbing rogues, reality-warping psionic insects, or trying to cross a flooded street with nothing but your wits and a dead zebra, you should give it a shot!
Download the pdf for free on Itch.io!
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