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SUMMARY

I

a writer and a musician 

to make an interactive fiction game.

joined Vidaly's remote startup team comprised of an EdTech entrepreneur, a software engineer, and a wellbeing education expert to help them make their first educational game.

I used my background as a games professor to teach them about how games work, how games are made, and how to support player choice.

I used my background in working on educational games to inform how we approached the delivery of educational content and assessments we gave the player in the game.

As the project lead, I wore the hats of

game designer and art director.

Over one month following 

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Themis Division: Bio
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WIP THEMIS DIVISION

Intermediate

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Themis Division: Skills
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THEMIS DIVISION

Release: Jan 2022
Studio: FamJam
Platforms: PC | Mac
Team size: 3 (Kris Gathman, Nicholas Gathman, and myself)
Project length: 48 hours
Responsibilities: creative & design direction/collaboration, worldbuilding, narrative design/writing, business development, marketing & community management, writing
Engine and tools: Twine, Adobe Suite, Google Suite

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Themis Division: Bio
Themis Division: Testimonials

"Let me get this straight. Your team doesn't have coding experience, and you still found a way to push Twine to its limits? I think that means you did a good job."

Themis Division: Video

GALLERY

Laptop
White File Folders
Reviewing CVs
Typing on Computer
Business Meeting
Filling Out a Form

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Themis Division: Portfolio

HIGHLIGHTS

Read on if you'd like to:

  • See highlights from Neptune's Bounty.

  • See more detail about my development process, with case studies.

Warning: text. Lots of it.

Themis Division: Text
Graphic Shapes

THE FIGHTING MCDONAGH TAVERN

A key location in Neptune's Bounty. I built the layout and crafted moment-to-moment gameplay.

This served as an exemplar of what good "spoke" (as in hub-and-spoke) spaces should feel like in BioShock in terms of:

  • Pacing and variety of play experience.

  • Amount of scripted moments vs. emergent and systems-driven gameplay.

  • Spatial scale.

  • Variety of space types and themes (eg. there's a bar area, wine cellar, basement office, and upstairs hotel rooms).

  • Amount of occlusion and thus "mystery" created by not being able to view an entire space from any single vantage point (the bar area is a great example of this: an open space with pillars and other vision blockers).

  • Amount of verticality (eg. the vertical element of a balcony overlooking the bar area).

Elements of the space were even retooled and re-used in BioShock 2, and there is a Fighting McDonagh's multiplayer map.

Moments such as a splicer wandering into the bar with a security camera in tow, or a Big Daddy showing up as you go to leave the bar feel like unscripted, systemic moments. They were however scripted. As much as possible I pushed for scripted moments to feel organic and natural. I wanted to blur the line between systemic and scripted moments so that it all feels the same to the player.

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Themis Division: Bio

VIDEO TITLE

Video Subtitle

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Themis Division: Video
Graphic Shapes

SUMMARY OF CONTRIBUTIONS

I was the designer responsible for __________. I built spaces, planned and scripted gameplay, told visual stories, and acted as ambassador of the player's experience in the level.

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Themis Division: Bio

CREATIVE DIRECTION

Creative Direction

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GAME DESIGN

Game Design

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NARRATIVE DESIGN

Narrative Design

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ART DIRECTION

Art Direction

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Themis Division: List
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