Lunacy
Feb. 2022
Made for the It's a Date game jam organized by The Papercut Arcade, this game challenges the player to break a terrible curse associated with the lunar eclipse. You can read about my process in creating this game by clicking the pdf link at right.
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Made for the Choose Your Own Way - Blackout game jam organized by The Papercut Arcade, this RPG Maker escape game is based on the Greek legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. The player must flee from the Minotaur and find a thread left by Ariadne, then follow the thread to the exit of the labyrinth.
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Theseus in the Dark
April 2021
Feb. 2021
Sutra Sonnets
Mindar is a robot, created in 2019, that resides in Kodaiji Temple in Kyoto, Japan. It speaks Zen Buddhist teachings – the Heart Sutras. Its creators made it in response to low birth rates in Japan and a resulting decline in the number of Buddhist monks. The intention is that Mindar will continue to teach long after the last monk has died.
Sutra Sonnets imagines a Mindar equipped with an artificial intelligence learning program (something the real Mindar does not have). It futher imagines that the robot has developed an interest in the Romantic Era poetry of Woodsworth, Keats and Shelley, and that it is substituting words from Buddhist sutras into their poems to create its own unique poetry.
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Jan. 2021
Black Flag Down
"Black Flag Down" was created for Global Game Jam 2021 in just 48 hours. This year's theme was "Lost and Found" and we imagined insects at war with cans of Black Flag insecticide as their nukes. One of the cans has gone down behind enemy lines in the Deep Woods, and your insect soldiers need to recover it before it triggers a World War.
Nov. 2020
Pharm Simulator 1918
Pharm Simulator 1918, designed by Maurice Grela and Lisa Smedman, was inspired by newspaper and magazine advertising of 1918, when the “Spanish Flu” arrived in North America. It casts the player as the owner of a small pharmacy that sells legitimate medicine, unproven “preventatives” and “cures,” plus basic medical and cleaning supplies. It’s an exploration of safety vs. profit in a time of deadly disease and conflicting information.
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As we designed Pharm Simulator 1918, we were struck by how much the newspaper stories mirrored those of today, and Covid-19. There were stories of public gatherings and sporting events being banned, churches and taverns being closed, of families who had lost loved ones to disease. Then, as now, there was conflicting information, pushback from the owners of businesses that were forced to close, and anti-mask rallies.
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The core loop of Pharm Simulator 1918 is to restock the store and then create an advertising flyer to promote products you think will best sell, given the newspaper articles that week. The more people you let into the store, the more profits – but also the more danger.
April 2020
Quest for Home - 30,000 BC
The ice age has forced your Neanderthal clan from its home. You begin an overland trek to search for a new cave. How many of your clan will survive?
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An interactive story, created using Twine for the "Choose Your Own Way 3" game jam of The Papercut Arcade.
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Feb. 2020
Haunted House Repair Co.
Created for the Global Game Jam 2020 in just 48 hours, this 2D arcade style game was inspired by the theme "Repair."
It’s your first shift at your new job. You’ve got a list of renovations to be completed at 100 Hauntley Street. Little did you know the house is full of ghosts! Smashy is a clumsy ghost, always breaking things. Frettie is embarrassed by the state the house is in, and keeps trying to hide whatever’s broken. Swipey loved fixing things when alive, and steals your tools, even though a ghost can’t use them! And Bumbler just floats around, watching it all.
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Nov. 2019
Alix Wants to Go Home
In September 2018, my mother broke her hip. Prior to her fall, she had been living at home, walking and strong, and taking the bus independently despite her dementia, but after two months in hospital, she was wheelchair bound and unable to care for herself. She needed to be placed in a seniors' care facility. While she was wonderfully cared for and supported, her advanced Alzheimer's made her unable to understand why she couldn't return home.
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“Alix Wants to Go Home” is an exploration of how it feels to lose your memories, and to feel confinement and the loss of home. It was made using RPG Maker for the Choose Your Own Adventure - Home game jam, hosted by Kay and Chris Slater, organizers of The Papercut Arcade.
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June 2019
Hungry Ghosts
Made for the Choose Your Own Adventure - Hungry game jam hosted by Kay and Chris Slater, organizers of The Papercut Arcade, this RPG Maker adventure tells the story of a couple in ancient China whose relationship goes horribly wrong. It's up to the player to travel back in time and rewrite their history to save them, using the iChing fortune telling coins. This game is a "vertical slice" of a much larger game idea; during the 12 days of the game jam, I only had time to implement one of the maps (the Forest map, the link for which is the tree). The other maps are not yet functional, but can be viewed.
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January 2019
Till the Cows Come Home
Made for the Global Game Jam 2019 in just 48 hours, this puzzle game challenges you to figure out what cows are trying to say - and they only speak in webdings!
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October 2018
Aungier Street
A work of interactive fiction, based on the 1851 ghost story "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street" by Sheridan Le Fanu. The game includes a working Ouija Board... just in case you feel like trying to contact the spirits!
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May 2018
Death awaits
Frogger meets Doodlebug in Dante's Desperate Dash, a game created for the One Game a Month game jam, with Maurice Grela (who did the programming and art). The theme of the jam was "death" and so we created a game about traversing the River Styx, collecting coins to pay the ferryman, while avoiding undead enemies.
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April 2018
DIVINITY ORIGINAL SIN 2
Nine Lives is a quest I wrote (in Twine) when testing for a Narrative Design position at Larian Studios. It involves cats, and superstitious Magisters, and a teenage girl bent on revenge.
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January 2018
Babelfish
Made for the Global Game Jam 2018 in just 48 hours, this game tells the story of a trader who hopes to negotiate with aliens - only to find that the human who will be his translator only speaks Portuguese!
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Sept. 2017
WORLDSPINNER
The world comes to life in Worldspinner, the RPG map-making, adventure-generating software product I contributed to a while back (and that several of you backed on Kickstarter). My contribution was the "Arcane Portals" section, a magical "fast travel" system through the world. For all you DMs out there, this software is worth a look. Best of all, you can try it out for free. Here's the link: www.worldspinner.com.
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Aug. 2017
Attention FALLOUT fans...
Aren't You Special is a quest set in the world of the Fallout 4 game that I built using the (primarily text-based) engine Twine. Think you're S.P.E.C.I.A.L.? Give this a playtest and find out. Click the link below to play the game online.
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