This portfolio isn't an exhaustive list of everything I've ever done, and crucially, it doesn't include professional work protected by NDAs – but it does feature some of the work I'm most proud of.

I've tried my best to curate the material on display here, and annotated my samples with contextual information wherever possible. Projects are sorted into categories, and ordered roughly in order of how cool I think they are.

Samples from each project, usually in PDF format, can be accessed by clicking the banner image.

Ongoing Projects

Whether it's been something I've been working on for a while, or some new idea that's caught my attention, I'm always working on something. These are the main ones at the moment.

Wayside Logo

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Interactive campfire story (2023)

Wayside is the latest creation from myself and a group of friends who get together once a year for a 'creativity jam'. For 2023, we chose the word "radioactive" and the phrase "you made it feel like home" as randomly-selected themes.

I devised the overall structure, led the narrative design, and wrote about half of the prose (mentoring a friend to write the other half). The character, object and environment designs were proposed by the handful of talented 2D artists among us, and their work informed/inspired the narrative, which was a really fun process! There's also an amazing soundtrack I had nothing to do with.

We challenged ourselves to complete this project in a weekend, and slightly overscoped – but for a few months after we continued to tinker with/polish it in our spare time, and released a final build we're very proud of.

Play ➔

Breakdown ➔

Slipgate Logo

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Science-fantasy webcomic (2014—present)

First and foremost, Slipgate is a passion project; it's a close collaboration between myself and Eve Travers and has been in development for several years now. It's a story about what happens after the end of the universe, and follows the last librarian, Kline, as they venture across the remaining planes of reality.

Slipgate is one of those projects that has grown so large that we need a wiki to keep track of it all, but we're committed to getting it out into the world eventually. The file linked here is a preview of the art from the first issue alongside my scriptwork.

Preview ➔

Narrative Design

Though I draw upon my experience from many kinds of media, I'm most interested in writing for those that allow interactivity. Games, and other kinds of ludonarratives, are a uniquely powerful kind of art, and perfectly suited to the kinds of story I like to tell.

Flock Together

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Unity-based adventure game (2021)

Flock Together is a bird management simulator about an impending climate catastrophe. It's the first release by Lizard Elixir, an indie dev collective I put together for the GMTK Game Jam 2021.

For Flock Together, I worked as a producer and as the primary narrative designer; I wrote the 'story cards', dialogue and promotional copy, and will continue in this role for our future projects.

Play ➔

Breakdown ➔

Evidence File MT-695/B

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Narrative object (2016)

There's something about tactility in narrative art - I think that being able to touch and manipulate objects is a really fun and interesting way of blurring the lines between fiction and the real world.

Inspired by the mechanics of non-linear investigation games like Her Story and the tone of Twin Peaks, Evidence File MT-695/B tells a story through a collection of physical documents, enclosed in a manilla folder and supposedly collected during an investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a teenage girl.

Breakdown ➔

The Norrjärvistad Tether

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Twine game (2015)

Inspired by the atmosphere of Simon Stålenhag's paintings, and the mechanics of the Lifeline series, this sci-fi mystery places the player in the role of...themselves. The Norrjärvistad Tether has the player 'contacted' by a young child who has found a strange artefact; it's up to the player to guide their new friend through an adventure.

Play ➔

Station

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Twine game (2016)

A classic science fiction story which places the player in the role of a starship pilot on approach to a space station; my focus in writing this was to efficiently and believably communicate exposition without breaking the immersion of the player. As a proof-of-concept, I experimented with adapting the story into a print version.

Play ➔

Half-Life: New America

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Flavour, lore & in-game items (2021)

In late 2020, I returned to one of my old haunts - a Half-Life roleplaying community based in Garry's Mod. As a game master and senior member of the community, I created unique in-game items for the custom gamemode and helped concoct various out-of-game lore documents and flavour text to help immerse players in the collaborative fiction.

Breakdown ➔

Legends of Equestria

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MMORPG questlines (2013)

Yes, back in the day I was part of the 'brony' fandom; as a volunteer writer, I wrote and designed several quests, including early versions of the 'animal care' tutorial path, and created several characters which remain in the game to this day.

Breakdown ➔

Assorted Projects

Certain projects don't fit neatly into any sort of grouping, but are still worth sharing!

Ponies, Pineapple & Chemo

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Creative non-fiction prose (2019)

A few years back, my sister was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma, a kind of bone cancer; what followed was a long and arduous journey to recovery. In the aftermath, each member of the family found their own ways to deal with the trauma - and for my dad, that was writing a book.

I contributed two chapters, featuring my perspective on some of the events. The first printing of the book in 2016 made the news, and nowadays the book is available via Amazon Kindle.

Read ➔

Arbitrium

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Short story (2020)

Spontaneously inspired by a prompt from a friend and written from dual perspectives, this is a time travel story about a point in time in which information is exchanged from the future, changing the past.

Read ➔

One Simple But Perfect Event

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Art zine (2019)

Zines have always fascinated me, and since playing Gone Home some years back, I've always wanted to make one. This little collection of photos was simply a fun design experiment. I made several batches and distributed them in a city centre for free.

Read ➔

Aay'han Fragments

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Poetry/nanofiction (2018—present)

Sometimes you overhear, mishear or think up words and phrases that are worth writing down - that's why I started this little account. Why do I keep up with it? I'm not entirely sure - but it's fun.

Read ➔

This Website!

Website (2020—present)

In retrospect, opting to put this site together myself instead of using a cookie-cutter website builder might have been more effort than it's worth - but I did in fact wrangle all the HTML and CSS myself! Bear in mind that the first version of this site looked like this.

Fanfiction & Derivative Works

Like many writers, in my early years I wrote fanfiction for fun – but during the COVID-19 pandemic I found a new use for the practice: I kept my creative brain ticking over by delving into comfortable, familiar fictions and formats. Since then, I've kept up with it as a hobby, and as an opportunity to help out with charitable causes.

Your Touch

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Creative prose (2023)

As a lifelong but penitent Star Wars fan, I try not to get involved in the usual fandom arguments, hysteria and hype. But with the airing of the Ahsoka TV series, I fell hard into fandom over one specific character pairing – 'wolfwren' – and did some of my best fan-writing in years. It's a somewhat spicy, but strictly canon-compliant tale that focuses on the characters' mental states.

The link here takes you to my Ao3. Explore further, if you dare.

The beautiful art used for this banner is used with permission from an incredible artist named Gabi.

Read ➔

URB-LOC 0017 SUMMER 20XX

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Creative prose (2022)

Shortly after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, I got involved with City 17: A Zine for Ukraine, a Half-Life fanzine created to raise money for Razom, a charity that provides medical and logistics support to civilians. It was a fun little project to be a part of, and a great excuse to write from the perspective of a vortigaunt, and to play around with a particularly fun frame narrative.

The art used in the banner is by Francesca Magali – her piece appeared next to mine in the zine!

Read ➔

The 2.0 Bootleg: Puberty

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Podcast episode (2020)

In the midst of the pandemic, my involvement in the 2.0 Podcast and its associated fan community led to a fun experiment: with a friend, I performed a one-night-only, live 'bootleg' episode of the podcast, featuring call-ins from members of the community and the hosts of the podcast itself. We shook up the format of the original show, and tried to put our own spin on it.

Listen ➔

Birdhouse

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Creative prose (2020)

Inspired by listening to the audiobook of my favourite book, Roadside Picnic, during walks on a local common, Birdhouse is my attempt to match the Strugatskys' writing style and modernise certain elements from the classic sci-fi novel.

Read ➔

Extracts From A Carnal Memoir

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Creative prose (2020)

A small anthology of erotic stories for Sheer Trouble, an charity She-Ra fanzine which aimed to raise money for the for the Martha P. Johnson Institute and the Trans Women of Color Collective.

Read ➔

Research & Academic Works

In my later years at university, I started to do more serious scholarly work. Most of that work centred on broadening the definition of games, and the implementation of narrative design outside of traditional video games. These academic adventures informed my growing philosophy, and continue to influence my approach to narrative/game design.

Theses

My undergraduate thesis, Ludonarratology of Harmony: On Defining And Designing Emotional Games, and my Master's thesis, No Past Lives: On Liminal Ludonarratology, Mirroring & Amnesia are both pretty dense, and ultimately pretty dry, but I'm more than happy to share copies with anyone who's interested.

Art Is Resistance: A Topology for Alternate Reality Games

A research paper on the history, nature and future of alternate reality games - which I feel are a powerful, but underused form of interactive storytelling.

Dakhma

Produced as part of practice-based research, this is a complete game design document outlining a hypothetical psychological horror game designed to synchronise the emotional experience of the player with their character.