Strathem
- Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy RPG
- Type: Quest
- Narrative Tools: Arcweave, Excel, PPT
- Duration: 17 weeks
- Role: Narrative designer / Game Writer
Responsibilities Overview
Goal
- Designing a narrative-focused project with iterations closely guided by veteran narrative designers.
- Improving understanding of interactive narrative design, writing skills, processes, and formatting that assist production of cohesive and quality storytelling.
- Understanding the importance of supporting collaborative processes between narrative design, level design, and other disciplines.
- Familiarizing myself with the nuances of narrative design and collaborative, iterative, creative output.
- Authored original worldbuilding, character designs, narrative systems, as well as additional documentation created to support the production process between disciplines in the studio.
Linear & Branching Dialogue
Designed Quest Branching Dialogue
I designed branching dialogue that tied narrative stakes directly to gameplay, using triggers, variables, and thematic choice structures to shape player experience. I created dynamic dialogue that responds to player actions prior decisions, and environmental context to ensure player choices felt acknowledged throughout the narrative experience.
Executed the choice design of the branching dialogue with following principles:
- Narrative Stakes — I structured variables in a way to create meaningful emotional and narrative consequences, ensuring player decisions influenced character relationships, tone, and future interactions. I curated the choices so that they feel connected to both the story arc and gameplay progression.
- Polarized Choices — Dialogue options were intentionally differentiated in motivation and consequence to encourage roleplay expression rather than presenting functionally identical responses. Polarized player routes increase deployability while allowing players to define their character identity through distinct paths.
- Player Agency — Branching structures were designed to consistently acknowledge player intent through reactive dialogue, altered scene outcomes, and evolving character dynamics. By reinforcing cause and effect across conversations, I supported a dialogue system that creates a sense of ownership for the player during their narrative experience.
Linear Dialogue - Thought Process
I wrote the linear dialogue with the following principles in mind:
- Narrative Cohesion — The linear dialogue was written to reinforce the player’s objectives, emotional stakes, and world building simultaneously, ensuring every line support both gameplay progression, character development, and narrative flow.
- Engaging Pacing — Linear dialogue cadence and line length were carefully structured to complement gameplay flow, balancing exposition with momentum so scenes remained dynamic and responsive.
- Preventing Player Fatigue — ‘Player taps’ were kept in mind during the design process. I prioritized readability, concise exchanges, and clear emotional intent to avoid overwhelming the player. Information delivery was layered through natural conversation to maintain immersion while reducing cognitive overload during extended play sessions.
Character Design & Barks
Player Character: Wynter Martinez
The Player Character was designed as a customizable RPG protagonist built to support player agency, role-play expression, and branching narrative interaction. I curated organized Powerpoint documentation covering the PC’s character design, backstory, combat identity, dialogue barks, weapons, and attacks to improve clarity and collaboration across departments. The PC was developed to function as both a narrative anchor and a flexible player avatar shared through player choice.
- Roleplay & Narrative Design — I built the PC around themes of identity and player choice, allowing narrative interactions to reflect different personalities, moral alignments, and playstyles.
- Gameplay & Character Integration — Designed dialogue barks, combat presentation, weapons, and player responses to support immersion and integrate narrative tone and character expression with gameplay.
- Cross-Department Collaboration — I organized the character design, attacks, weapons, and barks into clear presentation materials that streamlines communication and supports collaborative iteration across a multi-disciplined team.
Ally NPC: Cait Rackham
This ally NPC was built as an early-game faction leader, serving as both a narrative guide and a morally ambiguous figure in a position of power within her community. As a non-human character, her background, occupation, and cultural perspective were developed to strengthen world building and establish the social dynamics of the game world. The character’s personality was intentionally written to be witty, abrasive, and morally grey, encouraging players to question their motivations and form their own conclusions about whether the character deserves loyalty or distrust.
- Worldbuilding & Narrative Function — Developed the character’s species, occupation, and faction leadership role to communicate the political structure, social tensions and hierarchy of the game world through character interaction.
- Morally Grey Choice Design — I wrote the character with conflicting motivations, sharp humor, and abrasive dialogue to create nuanced player relationships and support branching narrative decisions without presenting a clear ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ alignment choice.
Enemy NPC: Daemamond Kael
The enemy NPC showcased was designed as a non-human antagonist intended to challenge the player character narratively and emotionally rather than function as a purely evil opposing force. I developed his character design, weapon concepts, backstory, combat barks, and attack design to create a cohesive enemy identity that reinforced his presence across gameplay and narrative encounters.
- Narrative Foil Design — I structured his backstory and motivations to mirror and contrast the player character’s personal history, creating physical as well as emotional conflict rooted in ideology and perspective rather than a simplified hero-versus-villain dynamic.
- Integrated Combat & Character Design — His weapons, attacks, and combat barks were designed to communicate personality, emotional state, and narrative history during gameplay encounters. This reinforces storytelling through gameplay mechanics and enemy behavior.
Storyboarding & Trailer Script Writing
I wrote a storyboard script for the opening sequence of the game, and sketched a preliminary storyboard to collaborate with the art and marketing teams, and get internal approvals:
- Cinematic Direction — I noted lighting, camera angles, framing, character movement, and shot timing estimates to communicate scene intnt with art, animation, marketing, and VO teams.
- Production Planning — Accounting for budget, time, and art contraints, I also addressed questions surronding pacing, framing, movement, and scene clarity.
- Narrative & Atmosphere — I established the player character’s primary objective while creating a tone of mystery, intrigue, and emotional stakes for the opening sequence.
- Multi-Department Suppport — Created documentation that supported VO recording, production planning, and marketing alignment through dialogue, shot sequencing, and visual direction.
- Pre-Production Prototyping — The storyboard design’s intention was to serve as an early prototype to assist in organizing narrative flow, cinematic pacing, and gameplay introduction before production.
Voice Over Documentation
I authored Voice Over Actor documents to support performance consistency and streamline recording sessions. Each document included:
- Character design references, bios, personality traits, motivations and vocal direction to establish performance tone and characterization.
- Dialogue scripts paired with scene context, quest summaries, and emotional beats to provide situational clarity for actors during recording.
I compiled a Voice Over Casting document to aid casting choices based on character age, cultural background, vocal range, and performance requirements, helping to align actor selection with the narrative design goals.
Worldbuilding
Fleshed Out The Locations for The Map
Created the building documents for the art and design teams to establish clear environmental direction and ensure cohesive world building across the locations, supporting faster iteration and more confident production decisions.
- Production Clarity & Efficiency — Defined environment intent upfront so art and design teams could immediately understand gamplay function, tone, and narrative purpose of each location, reducing ambiguity and minimizing revisions cycles during production.
- Intent-Driven Environmental Details — Every design choice served a narrative and gameplay purpose, from exterior silhouettes signaling a building’s function (e.g., weapons, medicine, commerce) to interior layouts reflecting the personality, role, and lifestyle of the inhabiting NPC.
- Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration — I combined lore, spatial design, and visual direction into unified location documents that support level design, art, and narrative teams simultaneously, ensuring environmental storytelling remains consistent across disciplines.
I incorporated lore into environmental design through both exterior and interior details to reinforce mood, gameplay function, and narrative context.
- Functional Exterior Storytelling — Exteriors were designed to immediately communicate purpose, specialization, and world logic, allowing players to quickly read whether a location functioned as a merchant hub, medical space, or faction-controlled area.
- Character Driven Interiors — The interiors reflected the personality and role of the resident NPC, using layout, clutter, and object placement to convey lifestyle, status, and narrative history within the space.
- Material & Texture Design — Consistent texture and material choices were used across environments to establish tone and emotional atmosphere, reinforcing whether a location felt safe, sterile, industrial, or worn by conflict.
Designed Strathem's Cartography
I designed the Stratified Metropolis to meet specific spatial and gameplay needs for a restricted Science Fiction, cyberpunk, setting.
The cartography design addresses these principles:
- Spatial Restriction: The map is intentionally limited in size to focus on character interactions and life simulation, avoiding unnecessary exploration fatigue.
- Zoning Clarity: Each area has a distinct function. There is an urban center, residential zones, neighborhoods separated by class divides in aesthetics, and intriguing landmarks which makies navigation and story progression intuitive.
Genre and Content Research
Conveying the intended genre, narrative, and aesthetics is crucial during pre-production to establish strong creative cohesion across departments. I researched media aligned with the project’s early narrative direction and compiled the findings into a concise, easily digestible reference document.
I conducted critical analysis on films, games, and cinematic media that shared similar narratives themes, tonal direction, gameplay structures, and visual aesthetics.
- Research Documentation — I created a comparative chart featuring trailers, media summaries, and analysis of narrative, gameplay, and aesthetic influences to provide clear creative references across.
- Targeted Narrative & Gameplay Research — I analyzed pacing, environmental storytelling, player motivation, cinematic tone, and faction dynamic across comparable media to identify patterns that supported the project’s intended player experience and narrative direction.
- Pre-Production Validation — The researched helps to establish a shared creative vision between departments while validating early decisions surrounding tone, gameplay structure, visual identity, and audience expectations.