Abyssal Novelist presents:

I led our 3-person team for the 1-Bit gamejam! Together we created Lost Fathoms, an experimental idle/incremental + submarine sim game, in just under 7 days!Besides leadership and management, I was also the lead narrative and gameplay designer.The game was awarded the #4 spot in the gamejam's rankings out of 110 total submissions, and was praised for its gameplay, atmosphere, and uniqueness.

• Play on Itch.io!

Matchmaking for Ghosts

Matchmaking for Ghosts is the latest project I am involved in!
I was responsible for early consultations, the game's narrative design, as well as for some game design bits and pieces.

I was part of a wonderful writers' room, where we cooperated as a team to write out branching narratives and dialogue trees for dates for all 28 possible character pairs!

As this was a dating sim/visual novel hybrid, this meant a total word count of over 150K words!

• Read samples here!

A Dark Forest

As co-lead, I worked on the narrative design and writing of the hit indie game A Dark Forest which reached the top of Itch.io's front page while generating over 120k views, 70k lifetime plays, and 450k impressions over the course of one week.

I helped create almost all of the player-facing text, including UI/UX, dialogue, and item descriptions.

I was also responsible for managing the project's Trello boards, management, and production.
I was responsible for sourcing localization specialists, and took part in the process of hiring our artist.

• Check it out!

The Sproutlings

I created, designed, playtested, and wrote lore for The Sproutlings — a custom fan-made playable Spirit for the wonderful settler-destruction physical board game Spirit Island.

This included creating their own gameplay mechanics, playable cards, background lore entry, and innate powers.


Fun fact, in total it took 35+ iterations, 3 reworks, overbuffing twice, and overnerfing once to finish designing and balancing this Spirit!

• Give them a look!

Strategy Game Civs

I designed the playable civilizations and wrote their introductory text segments for CivPlanet, a strategy game currently in development.

• Check them out!

Introductory Dialogue

I wrote the intro dialogue of Yuke and the Book of Yokai, focusing on conveying as much information as possible — as concisely as possible — to the player. This included elements such as in-game lore and setting, gameplay elements, and characterization.
I also wrote all the text you see on the Steam page!

• See it in action here!

Dialogue, Quests, and NPCs

This document contains a sample of various styles of dialogue, an example of my quest design work, and example NPCs.

They aren't tied to any specific project and were created for the sole purpose of embellishing this portfolio.

• Read it!

Statements from past clients

This document contains statements and reviews from my past clients! I like to collect them and look at them on rainy days, or whenever I don't feel as confident in my abilities.

Feels nice to be appreciated, thank you, everyone!

• Check them out!

Deadly Empathy

I was the lead writer and narrative designer for Deadly Empathy, a now canceled roguelite cyberpunk horror inspired by games such as Signalis and Silent Hill.

I helped our team codify a project lore bible, which was quite a challenge, since everyone had different ideas on how the narrative should be structured.

I was also responsible for the narrative design documents and personally designed the eponymous gameplay mechanic: Deadly Empathy, making sure to tie it directly into the game's narrative design!

• Skim through them!