I developed the ASCENSION UNIVERSE with Digital Roar Studios, an indie startup where I worked with a team of artists, designers, and programmers as a writer and narrative designer. I created missions, characters, environments, and an epic mythos that was part of a much larger expanded universe. We released two games: a mobile strategy game and an in-browser space-flight shooter.
Trailer for our turn-based strategy game
Demo for space-flight shooter
The Ascension Stageplay
I was selected as one of six playwrights to develop my work at the 2010 WordBRIDGE playwriting lab. The play I developed, Ascension War, is set before the events of the games and is an important part of the Ascension mythos.
At WordBRIDGE, I workshopped for three weeks, receiving feedback from professional dramaturgs, directors, designers, actors, and resource artists. The play received three full staged readings.
Later, I would be selected to participate in the Playwriting Summer Intensive at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC, where I would workshop the Ascension play along with several others.
Digital roar studios
Many of our programmers and artists have used the work we did at DR to propel them to careers at companies like Bungie, Black Tusk, Tripwire Interactive, Dreamworks Animation, Pixar, and others.
One of the most rewarding things about working with the team was our frequent excursions to game development conferences in Atlanta and nearby Raleigh, NC where myself and other team members gave presentations, served on panels, and staffed the company booth on the expo floor.
The DR crew celebrates the end of the conferences with our brothers from TRIPWIRE INTERACTIVE.
Our third year at SIEGE drew the biggest crowds yet.
The crowds at TCG/the East Coast Games Conference were even bigger.
Our key art made the conference cover at SIEGE.
Our first mobile demo was a hit!
The guys from the Escapist really enjoyed our demo. The shirt they gave me is remains a valuable part of my T-shirt collection.
Another fan of our demo.
Even kids got into the action.
Note the Farmville spoof add on the second screen. The farmer passes out when a Kj'hal ship drones overhead.
An adventure in serving safe food
The narrative begins with a lecture from your instructor that is quickly interrupted by an emergency call -- young Timmy Timmerton has reported food contamination at the Hometown Food Festival! It's up to you, the Rookie Food Inspector, to get down there and keep people from getting sick...
As you explore in and around the festival the anxious crowd outside grows restless. Will you save the festival before they stampede for the unsafe food?
You interact with the festival volunteers who explain what they've been doing to keep the food safe, and you discover that Timmy Timmerton is in fact the notorious food spoiler, Sal Monella!
With a job well done, you can print out a customized certificate of completion and enjoy some good, safe food.
Rookie Food Inspector is an educational game that I developed in 2006 as the capstone project for my Masters in Communication. It was designed to be used as a learning tool to supplement classroom instruction for volunteer food handlers in my home state of South Carolina.
Between a partner and myself, we handled all of the writing, design, artwork, and coding.
Rookie food inspector
Susan O'Connor's Game Writing Masterclass has a deep focus on both story and structure within the context of gameplay. We think and discuss topics to provide a nuanced, critical understanding of storytelling in games and how writing can best support design and gameplay. The documents included here were created in class with Susan's guidance and the guidance of the other many talented game writers in the cohort.
Re-imagining HADES
This document lays out my approach for changing the story in Hades with minimal impact on gameplay. A case study.
stuck in an elevator (character voice)
Ever wonder what would happen if Zeratul from StarCraft, Duke Nukem, and Q-bert got stuck in an elevator? That's so funny... me too! Good thing all we have to do to find out is read this short cinematic. An exercise in character voice.
working with a designer (game concept + Flowchart)
My thought process of writing a horror game while working with a designer in which I invent a clown-themed survival horror game with Poofy the Non Player Clown, featuring The One Clown to Fool Them All, Beezlebozo.
interactive fiction
ZANZIBAR'S BEST FRIEND
A PC Beast Master Ranger finds his animal companion in a homebrew D&D campaign.
QUOGIN'S NIGHTMARE
How one PC's nightmare determined the entire trajectory of a D&D campaign.
Sure Thing!
Sure Thing is a classic comedic play by David Ives. In the play, two strangers meet in a cafe. As their conversation progresses, a bell rings when one character responds unfavorably, and the conversation resets as if time had been rewound. My interactive version of Sure Thing is a word-for-word translation of Ives' text with the conversational resets presented as user choices.