Works in Narrative Design
Here, you can see all the games and projects that I’ve worked on that are primarily focused on Narrative Design.
HalfMoon (Worldbuilding)
Solo Project | Tabletop role-playing game about humans, monsters, shifters, and a moon split in half by a magic meteor | Microsoft Word, Burning Wheel | All worldbuilding & narrative aspects, used Burning Wheel as a base for rules
HalfMoon is a tabletop role-playing game I made back in 2019 in the span of about a month, and is one of my first original “properties.” I based it around a design doc for a character action game set in the same world as this, spurred on to do so after a seminar at the DigiPen Institute of Technology to make something long before I would get into the gaming industry.
All of the worldbuilding can be found in the game’s rulebook, which isn’t exactly the most detailed. Granted, this was my first properly original work, and I didn’t have much other than the broad strokes: there’s a moon that got split in half by a magic meteor that fell into the planet, and there are humans, anthropomorphic monsters, and beings that can shift between the two forms. As mentioned earlier, the main reason why this game exists in the way that it does is to get something out the door; not just to get into the industry, but also to have something prepared for a portfolio when applying to DigiPen.
Caleb’s Quest
Collaborative Project | Livethread & story series based on a Pokémon Sword playthrough | Twitter/X, Wakelet, Google Docs | All posts & writing
Caleb’s Quest is an ongoing multi-media series of my in-character playthrough of Pokémon Sword for the Nintendo Switch. It’s the story of Caleb, a washed-up 20-year-old Pokémon Trainer who wants a second chance to become the Champion after he had been humiliated a decade ago. I started this project on a complete whim in late 2019 after an idea had been rattling around in my head about a Pokémon Trainer who had gone through his own adventure, but never succeeded at the thing that most players become in their own playthroughs. Since the more recent Pokémon games featured character creation, I embraced it and created a sort of emergent narrative by both playing it and adding a few of my own original ideas, a thing that I enjoy the most about making and playing games.
With the Switch’s now-defunct function of posting images and video clips to Twitter (now X), I decided to make several posts as if I was Caleb reacting to the in-game events, compiling them into the now-defunct Moments feature for easy reading. Additionally, certain events both in and out of the game are written via Google Docs, also shared via Twitter. Now, it’s all complied via Wakelet’s Collections.
Caleb’s Quest was mainly made for fun before I started getting serious with my writing, occasionally collaborating with some artists who happen to be very close personal friends of mine, the biggest and most important two being @cyberstevie on Tumblr and @briwolfer on Bluesky. It’s a series where I very much fly by the seat of my pants, writing down the things I do mainly because I think they’re cool. Additionally, it marks the true beginnings of my signature style with these sorts of things, adding music tracks to certain scenes for greater impact, as well as creating custom videos for openings and/or endings to make it more “anime-like” to some degree. It’s a style where I want readers to visualize the intense, complex, and exciting visual sequences that I have in my head, to paint a picture of “watching” the series rather than just reading it.
Kamen Rider Chance
Solo worldbuilding project | A world bible for a fan-made Kamen Rider series | Google Docs
Kamen Rider Chance is a fan-made lore document of my own original Kamen Rider character that I made when I was first getting into the series. The “show” stars Tsuki Hano, a down-on-his-luck guy working multiple jobs to pay off his immense debts. After meeting up with his childhood friend, an engineer by the name of Daisuke Sugihara, he takes up the mantle of Kamen Rider Chance, a masked superhero who gambles his life to face off against the monster threat known as the “Jinx.” But along the way, he faces off against other Kamen Riders, such as Coda who fights as the card-themed “Kamen Rider 52,” occasionally doing so to defeat their Jinx target(s) first or fighting in a pro-wrestling style event to win the crowd’s favor.
This was my first proper attempt at a world bible of sorts, and I really wanted to hit all of the common beats and tropes that a typical Kamen Rider series would have, such has having multiple forms, a common motif running through every Rider and monster of the week (those being casino games and bad luck superstitions respectively), the powers of each Rider, an episode list, etc. I even added musical themes for each main characters for the more important forms that they’ll use, as well as create two transformation sequences for Tsuki and Daisuke using sounds and music from the main Kamen Rider franchise and stock ones that I found online.
It’s really hard to plan out about 50 episodes’ worth of plot just by myself, even if I had all the time in the world and wasn’t pressured by any typical constraints of making/filming a TV show. Still, I’m happy I set out to do it in the first place. A big part of this “series” would eventually become the basis for All Systems Struggle, my personal webseries about a tournament and masked warriors known as “Riders.” Tsuki Hano even makes a bit of a cameo there as a character.
The Coin & Wager
Solo Project | Choose-your-adventure game about running a store & protecting it from hooligans | Twine | All mechanical & narrative aspects
The Coin & Wager is a little Twine project I made for an assignment to test the capabilities of branching paths. You play as Bet, a anthropomorphic rat-rabbit hybrid and an old original character of mine. He runs the game’s namesake, a convenience store called “The Coin & Wager,” with his tall cat coworker named Fay. In this game, you experience a potential scenario: dealing with some punks and hooligans who threaten you, your shop, and your coworker. You have the option to either physically fight them, talk them out of it, or stay silent and get beaten up.
If this were to be turned into an actual video game, I visualize this as a sort of combination of a store management game combined with a brawler, a game where you run and sell things but also fight others. The talking path was simple enough, it was more of a “choose the one right option” and it’s only one choice that you have to make. If I had more time, I could’ve had a similar approach I had with the combat path, where you would have several approaches for each line others would say. Speaking of which, the combat path has you fight the hooligans by either attacking, countering, or dodging in each “round.” The fight counts how many enemies you successfully defeated, and the ending is determined by how well you did.
All Systems Struggle
Collaborative Project | Webseries inspired by tokusatsu shows about CPU fighters in a tournament | Google Docs, YouTube, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate | All worldbuilding & episode writing/recording
All Systems Struggle (often abbreviated to just ‘ASS’) is a collaborative multimedia webseries that uses Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and the fights between CPU characters to tell part of the story, formatted in the style of a TV anime or tokusatsu show, complete with opening and ending sequences (which you can watch below). With its conception beginning in late 2021, The series itself is about a tournament show of the same name, led and hosted by Tera and Daigo, as they deal with bizarre fighters, evil corporations, and destructive devices that look like childrens’ toys. Additionally, viewers and readers can submit their own characters to be included in the series. However, whether they leave a massive impact on the overarching plot as a whole is entirely dependent on how they perform in battle. Episodes are largely written in Google Docs with battles uploaded to YouTube placed in-between certain sections.
While making ASS, I created two separate lore documents. The first is the “general” page containing all of the basic information about where the show takes place, the teams that are participating in these tournaments, the Riders and their finishers, as well as links that lead to the whole roster of fighters, the fighter submission page, and the episode list. This one is more for the public eye and serves as a “home page” for everything. The second is a super secret lore document that contains all of my plans for future events of the series, including characters, Riders, and tournament rulesets and rosters for later episodes. It also serves as a “timeline” of sorts for me to remember what occurred each episode that would build off each other and to keep track of the in-universe timeline of events from before the start of the series.
My main goal with ASS was to capture the feeling of sitting down in front of a TV with a friend and having them show you this TV series that they got into, as well as capturing the excitement, drama, and whimsy of a typical tokusatsu show, specifically things like Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and Ultraman. This includes things like having episodes being released every Sunday, commissioning a logo that matches the typical metallic and sharp aesthetics of shows like it, playing the opening sequence near the start of the episode and the ending sequence at the end for every episode, giving characters insert themes that play whenever they do something really cool, and having characters transform into superpowered armored warriors known as ‘Riders.’ There have been many online shows and series like ASS, where people essentially run a cockfighting tournament with CPU fighters. But I wanted to not only do that, but share my joy and love for tokusatsu with the people who read and watch.
Midnight Witch Starlight
Narrative & Level Design, then Design Lead | 2D run & gun game about a fake magical girl anime from the 90s | Custom engine | Team size: 11-15 | Worldbuilding, lore, character profiles, example dialogue | Led the charge in revising the game aesthetic & theme
Midnight Witch Starlight is a 2D sidescrolling run and gun game inspired by 90s anime about a magical girl fighting against the forces of darkness, made in my first big game project class that would span for two semesters, leading to a development cycle of eight months. I was the Narrative and Level Designer for Tuxedo Toucan, the team behind the game, until I got rapidly promoted to Design Lead. Originally, the game was titled MagiCraft, until we as a team realized that we needed more to stand ourselves out and to make the game make more sense, since you don’t exactly “craft” in this game. It was then that I decided to lead the charge in changing the game’s theming, transforming it into what it is now. I wrote down the general aesthetic the game needed to match, character backstories, sample dialogue between them… I even designed the initial draft of the game’s new logo!
However, I was rapidly promoted to be the game’s Design Lead after another designer that was working on Systems, UI, and UX had to leave during the Spring semester half of the dev cycle. We did hire some additional people for other roles, but for the rest of development, I was the sole designer for the entire game. It was really tough to have to juggle every single discipline at once, but I had my team with me. They helped out in making the process of building the game in a custom engine as easy as possible. It may be a little bit around the edges, but we still managed to pull through in the end.
Tenkaichi: The Strongest Under Heaven (Worldbuilding)
Solo Project | Tabletop role-playing game about climbing a deadly tower | Homebrewery | All mechanical & narrative aspects
Tenkaichi: The Strongest Under Heaven is a tabletop role-playing game, written and designed entirely by myself for a Tabletop Game Design class, about climbing an ever-shifting tower to attain Heaven by destroying everything in your path. The game is heavily inspired by Tom Bloom’s Kill Six Billion Demons (the iconic phrase “Reach Heaven Through Violence” is directly quoted in the game) and Daniel Bayn’s Wushu.
Along with all the rules, Tenkaichi comes with its worldbuilding included. Originally, it focused on just the tower and the biggest “armies” that inhabit each floor, inspired by concepts in shows and games like Infinity Train or Library of Ruina. I wanted to make a game where players and gamemasters have a springboard to include whatever ideas they want while still playing through the game. However, one problem that I ran into was trying to come up with ideas for the world outside of the tower, which is where I used Ruina for further inspiration: make it a city dedicated to preparing and climbing this tower since not many people come back. One of my favorite tidbits of worldbuilding is its “currency” named Mera. Mera is the name of a bracelet that everyone in the tower wears to do anything, and anyone who enters the tower suddenly has it on their person. When someone wants something, they exchange things of equal value, essentially functioning as bartering. But, if someone doesn’t have something of equal value, they give the other their Mera, keeping it until they’ve paid any “debts” to the other, a concept partially inspired by the TV show Vikings with their “oath rings.”
Flash-Blade Renegade
Narrative Designer & QA Lead | 2.5D hack and slash game about a rebellious robot | Unreal | Team size: 12 | Worldbuilding & lore pickups
Flash-Blade Renegade is a 2.5D hack and slash game where you play as a robot being tested for combat purposes, only to fight back against its creator. I worked with S-Rank Games, the team behind it all, to help bring the Design Lead’s vision to life. As we were both Narrative Designers, we were both tasked with crafting the story and background. I was in charge of the lore and worldbuilding, plotting out a whole timeline of events that lead up to the start of the game. There’s a war going on in the background, one which the humans are losing, but they find hope in a legendary soldier known for their power and disobedient nature. Eventually, a robot was made to match that soldier’s abilities and is tested by fighting against other robots. Additionally, I wrote the lore journal collectibles that players can find while traversing the level.
E.G.O.: Eschaton Godhead Obliteration
Solo worldbuilding project | A post-apocalyptic world where people can manifest monstrous manifestations of their desires | Microsoft Word
E.G.O.: Eschaton Godhead Obliteration is a property I created for a worldbuilding class, where I spent the entire Fall 2022 semester crafting and planning and refining all aspects of its world bible. The premise is heavily inspired by things like Shin Megami Tensei and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: a world set in a post-apocalypse that was cause by people manifesting monsters with fantastical abilities known as “Id.” The Id represent the deepest and truest desires of the one who summoned it, and only a few can keep their own Id in check. These people who can control their Id are known as “EGOists.” In this world, whether you believe that things can be better or that you can rule the world, you must fight for it.
I’ve had experience making a few world bibles before, usually for my own personal projects. However, this was my first proper attempt at making something with every single aspect in mind such as the geography, weather, flora and fauna, cultures, historical timelines divided by eras… It was a lot, to say the least. Sometimes, I had to deal with being in a devastating creative rut, running dry on both ideas and motivation. Still, I grit my teeth and pushed through it, regardless of any setbacks that I’ve faced. And frankly, I’m quite proud of what I put out. I’ve always been a lover of cool anime nonsense, and I can only hope that I’ve captured it through my writing and concepts.
MNESIS: In Living Memory (WIP, Worldbuilding)
Solo Project | Tabletop role-playing game about sacrificing memories to cast magic | Notepad, BInAS | All worldbuilding & narrative aspects, used BInAS as a base for rules
MNESIS: In Living Memory is a tabletop role-playing game where players are magicians who sacrifice their own memories to cast incredibly powerful spells. Each spell is rooted in one of eight emotions: Joy, Sorrow, Fury, Terror, Vigilance, Surprise, Enmity, and Trust. These eight emotions also determine the type of spell you create, as well as your stats. The idea came from a throwaway comment I read on a review about an entirely different TTRPG, mentioning how it’d be neat to see a game where you use your memories and have to remember them in order to cast your spells. And after reading that, I went straight to work.
Worldbuilding is probably the thing that has taken up the most of my time in brainstorming. I knew that I could only write the rulebook once I was sure I had everything else ready, including the lore of the game. It started out simple enough thanks to its premise, people cast magic by converting their memories into polaroid photos and that magic is rooted in one of eight emotions that are their own type of spell. All of a sudden, things started to pour out of my head in short bursts; things like “spellcasters only practice in their heads because most spells are one time use,” “a creation myth that implies everything is a timeloop,” “a method of forcefully extracting memories without sacrificing your own,” “a cult obsessed with nostalgia,” and my personal favorite, “polaroid photos are named something else because the magic polaroids came first with those names being based on the La Trahison des images art piece and the ‘Jenny Haniver’ skeleton.”