About Me
I'm an Edinburgh based Narrative Designer and Writer. Hire me when:- When you need your sentient space ship to travel by unleashing a euphoria of xenofloratic infrastitch.- When your sleepy town needs an equal helping of levity and grief, and to navigate the fault line between the two.- When you want a game that is unrelentingly confrontational towards players and they like it anyway.- When you need complicated histories, queer identities, and modern anxieties to be treated with a respect that sometimes precludes the wholesome.- When no matter how absurd your setting or mechanics get, you want to make sure your players have a little guy* to befriend.*Sometimes a guy is a space station, or the ghost of a defunct reality television show.
In addition to my writing and design, I have a background in web service integrations and custom ERP scripting. I have the technical skills to implement my writing and make it sing in harmony with the larger systems of an interactive experience. I'm good with Inky and Twine, and I catch on quick with my client's in-house tools. I am... working on my CSS.
Feedback
People on Itch.io like my games! I've also won the Into Games Design Workout twice with two different interactive experiences.
Playable Games
Whispers In The West is a Multiplayer Co-Operative Murder Mystery Point & Click game set in the Old west. I worked with Infinite Whys as a writer to develop its characters and tone. I put the jokes in, turned the Rootin' Tootin' dial up to maximum, and manoeuvred carefully around the pitfalls of the genre and setting. This was a great project where I contributed mission briefings, character bios, item descriptions, and plenty of reactive dialogue.
I also have a number of sample experiences on my itch.io page. All of the below were designed and written solo:
Detritus: A History is my favourite thing that I have made. It asks the player to curate a popular history book. By selecting essays and samples to publish, the player learns about the world and their sinister place within it. I love historical games, but not enough of them treat history as the verb that it truly is. I was delighted to get a positive response to this from an academic historical perspective.
Take Me Out: The Official ITV Obituary Epitaph Eulogy Tribute is a dark, queer exploration of institutional normativity and the violence that underpins it. It uses the framing of a defunct reality television dating show to go to some dark places. Attention should be paid to the included content warnings. This one is very personal and I'm delighted to find that it pushes buttons with my fellow weirdos.
HELOT: The Lion's Den is an action science fiction drama written from the perspective of a voracious flesh and machinery eating virus. This piece won the Into Games Weekly Workout, and is a demonstration of writing within the style of popular modern Sci-Fi settings.
The Finish Line is a queer Sci-Fi romance that uses complex technobabble to talk around a simple truth that applies both to relationships and to quantum speedblaster drifting. This game also features simple realtime elements and reaction time challenges for the player. (And their relationship!) Much like Helot, this game won the Into Games Weekly Workout for Narrative work.
My Itch.io page contains various other experiments and examples of my earlier work.