<aside> 💫 Hi, I’m Alex!

I’m a video game narrative consultant with 5+ years of experience in the roles of creative director, writer, narrative designer, bizdev, and studio founder.

At any stage in your project, I’d love to help you with:

• establishing and refining plot, themes, character arcs
• creating deep, informed lore and worldbuilding
• developing basis for branching story and dialogue
• narrative design: systems, databases, and prototyping
• copy and design for pitch decks, marketing materials, Kickstarter, and Steam pages
• scouting and hiring for writers and narrative designers

I am available for short-term project work and consultancy sessions. You can find my portfolio below.

If you’d like to work together, please email me at 💌 [email protected] or DM me on 🦆 Twitter - @almightyplate.

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<aside> 🔧 Skills & tools

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Tools

Notion

Unreal Engine (blueprint-based dialogue plugin)

RenPy

Arcweave, Ink, Twine

Google stuff (Sheets, Docs, Slides)

ClickUp, Asana, Jira

Writing and design

Branching dialogues

Plot outlines

Shooting scripts

Character sheets and arcs

Lore bibles

Design documentation

Notion databases

<aside> ✨ About me:

I was born in Siberia, but now I live in the Netherlands with my 2 cats and 50 plants. In my free time I watch too many movies, paint, read, and play Slay the Spire.

My main creative goal on this planet is to find a way to talk about human condition in a sad, funny, honest, and vulnerable way. As an intersectional feminist, I believe that all art is political.

My favorite movie is Synecdoche, New York. Game - Planescape: Torment. Book - The Bell Jar.

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<aside> 🥚 Eggnut - Co-founder, bizdev, marketing director (2016 - 2022)

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https://eggnut.net/

I co-founded and ran fully remote, diverse international studio Eggnut for 5+ years. The indie nature of the studio meant that I had to wear a lot of hats. My main areas of responsibility at one point or another included: creative director, writer, narrative and game designer, business director, studio administrator, producer, marketing and PR director, and social media manager.

⭐️ My achievements:

• Helped the studio grow from 2 to 18 people.
• Ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising $100k.
• Popularized the Prologue Steam release genre with Backbone: Prologue. It gathered 4000+ positive review and brought 250k wishlists to the main game page.
• Pitched, negotiated, and signed 2 games with Raw Fury. You can see Backbone pitch deck and read about the process here.
• Curated a unique social media voice while running Backbone’s Twitter account, growing it to 24k followers.
• Released Backbone on PC, Switch, Xbox, and PS.

<aside> 🦝 Backbone - Creative director and writer (2016 - 2021)

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I directed, wrote, and designed Eggnut’s debute title Backbone - a narrative adventure inspired by the modern political regimes, works of Lynch and Kaufman, and existential philosophy of Sartre. It is a linear, cinematic narrative experience that subverts genre and challenges your perception of what it means to be a person.

The development took 4 years from the conception of the idea to release. Backbone’s storyline is a deeply personal and confessional one, and it evolved over the years as I grappled with the personal changes, immigration, and global pandemic.

⭐️ My achievements:

• Creative direction. Working with art, animation, and technical departments, my main responsibility was to keep the vision of the game unified across development disciplines. I made game documentation easily available for each member of the team and timely updated.

• Shooting script. Instead of a traditional video game script, for Backbone I designed a 60-page shooting script to be used for building the game in the engine. It includes scene descriptions, branching opportunities, lists of interactibles, direction on characters, environment, cutscenes, cinematics, and dialogue. You can read it here:

  Backbone Script.pdf

• 120k words of branching dialogue. My main goal was to create a highly polished, snappy and meaningful writing style that would keep players engaged through 4-6 hours of reading. Every dialogue option in the game had to serve the purpose of player’s emotional expression and agency. My job also included working with a blueprint dialogue system in Unreal Engine 4 and utilizing logs, events, booleans, integers, and other logic systems.

• Worldbuilding. Backbone is set in the world of anthropomorphic animals, but it tells a very human-centric story based in existentialism, universal struggle, and real-world oppression systems. For this purpose, I’ve created and curated a 50-page world bible outlining everything from weather, geography of the region, to religion, food culture and societal hierarchy.

Announcement trailer. I curated the storyboarding and production.

Announcement trailer. I curated the storyboarding and production.

Full game walkthrough - skip around to see the examples of my branching dialogue writing style.

Full game walkthrough - skip around to see the examples of my branching dialogue writing style.

<aside> 👩‍🎤 Wrestling with Emotions 2 - writer, narrative consultant (2022)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeI68u_AyHY&ab_channel=TeamLazerbeam

As part of the radical video game band Team Lazerbeam, I worked with director Ben on an upcoming dating simulator Wrestling With Emotions 2. My work included:

• Designing emotional story arcs for 2 characters - Arms and King Pretty Guy.
• Writing dialogue, scene descriptions, dates, and events within limitations of a visual novel.
• Flexing my comedy writing muscle by combining powerful feelings with lighthearted giggles.
• Working in RenPy.
• Building a Notion space for the team to track tasks.

<aside> 🦕 Amber Isle - writer, narrative consultant (2022)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-snt9tLX0M&ab_channel=WholesomeGames

In the role of a narrative consultant, I worked with game director Jordan Bradley on an upcoming cozy management game Amber Isle. My work included:

• Fleshing out character sheets by describing their tone of voice, hobbies and interests, story arcs, and questlines.
• Hiring a full-time writer for the project, which involved scouting, reviewing resumes and writing tests.

<aside> 🏆 Other jobs and awards

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Game Awards Future Class

I was honored to be a part of the first ever installment of Game Award’s Future Class in 2020 alongside 49 incredible individuals moving the game industry forward.