Writer & Narrative designer specializing in world building, characters and holistic design.
A few weeks ago I tweeted out a list of writing and narrative design books I’ve read this year. It’s important as designers to maintain and expand our skillsets, so I thought I’d share this year’s list in the hope that it will help anyone with an interesting in writing or game design. There’s very…
A while ago, I participated in Inkjam. A jam to make games with Inkle’s Ink. I used the Inky editor to export a web version. I’d wanted to get more familiar with it for a while, and I really wanted to finish something. My aim here wasn’t to do something totally revolutionary, but to focus…
For those of you who have not read any entries in this series these before, I’m playing through a couple of adventure games from each year following the release of Monkey Island 2. It’s been over a year since the last entry, a lot has happened for me personally. I had a really terrible time for…
I’m once again helping to organize AdventureX a convention dedicated to narrative & storytelling in games. It’s running November 11-12 2017 at Goldsmith’s University London. We just launched our Kickstarter and within 24 hours were funded. If you want to exhibit a game, give a talk or help us as a volunteer then you can…
I originally wrote this audio drama ( or radioplay if you will) for a writing contest but didn’t place, after letting it sit for a bit I polished it and decided to produce it myself. Set in the UK in the suburbs somewhere Wilkes is having his fence mended by a local handyman. Whilst there…
Adventure Afterlife 20 years of Adventure games – 1996 1996 was a another strong year for adventure games, whilst there weren’t as many releases as previous years two of my favorite adventure games of all time were released, both with a very British flavor. Interestingly one was a brand new series, whilst the other was…
AdventureX 2016 is over, and the feedback has been great. I summed up the coverage we’ve had on the blog here and here. The event was really fun to help work on and I think everyone involved was utterly exhausted by the end of the weekend. In a somewhat related note, the speakeasy edition of…
I’m once again helping to run AdventureX, a convention dedicated to narrative and storytelling in gaming. We’ve been running a Kickstarter which has gone pretty well and is allowing my co-organisers Tom and Ali to go out and secure superb speakers and entertainment. The convention is free to attend and will run in London on the…
Adventure Afterlife Part 4 1995 1995 continues the adventure game high of 1994 with a healthy mix of sequels ( mainly from Sierra), licensed games and new IP. Stylistically the games become more confident, with a move toward more cinematic forms of storytelling and love it or loathe it full motion video. FMV is the…
1994 sits right in the middle of the graphic adventure peak. After the staggeringly prolific 1993, the momentum carried well into the following year with a mix of new games and sequels to established franchises. Thematically there’s a heavy thematic shift towards science fiction, however in both the science fiction games I played through for…