Ms. Match (Choices: Stories You Play)

After wrapping up the finale of High School Story: Class Act, I joined the writing team on Ms. Match: a smart romantic comedy about luxury matchmaking in New York.

Unlike my previous project, in which I was part of production from the earliest phases, I joined the Ms. Match team after months of brainstorming had transpired - and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic!

My job was to learn the team’s existing vision as quickly and thoroughly as possible, dive right into script writing, and offer fresh ideas in brainstorms as the game evolved. I also participated in peer review, helping to refine and polish the team’s work.

Ms. Match was released to critical success, reaching the #1 grossing spot in Choices’ new VIP content subscription program.

High School Story & High School Story: Class Act (Choices: Stories You Play)

Between 2017-2020, I worked on High School Story and High School Story: Class Act, the official Choices adaptation series of Pixelberry Studios’ first successful mobile game. High School Story introduces new characters and storylines alongside familiar faces. The story follows a transfer student to Berry High, exploring friendship, romance, drama, and other teen coming-of-age experiences.

I began work on this project as a part-time hire just before my senior year of university. Having never worked in the games industry before, I learned how to brainstorm in writers’ rooms, adopt existing voice and style, outline stories, and contribute pivotal scenes to scripts… all while on a fast-paced delivery schedule to over half a million weekly readers!

Upon graduation and the start of my full-time employment, I had progressed in skill and responsibility tremendously. Alongside two other writers, I stepped into an active role in the creation of the sequel spinoff trilogy, High School Story: Class Act. Together, we wrote three books following a bright-eyed high school freshman navigating friendships, first kisses, family complexities, and dreams of acting on the stage.

I took collaborative ownership in every aspect of production, from character creation to writers’ room brainstorms to script writing. I fondly recall time spent iterating with the art team on a love interest’s design - sometimes, all a tough puzzle needs is a new approach, like taking off a love interest’s glasses to realize the key to his design!

The Disorder (Honors in the Arts project)

While writing for Pixelberry Studios during my senior year of Stanford University, I was also hard at work on another text based science fiction game.

Following acceptance into a prestigious cohort of 15 students with a total of 13 creative projects, I spent a year in the Honors in the Arts intensive, writing the first game the program had ever seen. Melding my major in Psychology with my passion for interactive narrative, I designed a Kafka-esque science fiction exploration of an alien mental healthcare system.

Inspired by real-world misunderstandings between psychological care and patients, this interactive textual experience places players into the role of The Traveler. The Traveler crashes into an alien world, soon discovering that every time they try to go home, the citizens respond with a diagnosis of mental instability! Throughout choice-based interactions with alien psychologists and strangers, the player must try to convince this new world to see outside its own biases… or risk never going home again.

The Home Planet (Telltale Creative Workshop finalist)

This was the first game I wrote in my life.

Created in Twine as an application to the Telltale Creative Workshop in 2017, The Home Planet poses a threatening question: What if the society you sought to rebel against literally controlled your oxygen supply? In this poetic and dystopian landscape, you must weigh decisions carefully, because every breath counts.

I will never forget scribbling down notes while writers at the height of narrative gaming spoke in the hotel conference room at that exclusive workshop. Easily the youngest person in the room, I thought tentatively, “Maybe I can write stories for a living after all.”

Play The Home Planet here.