Night in the Unpleasant House (2020)
in collaboration with Joel Haddock
A choice-based text game for iOS set in a spooky house owned by a dictatorial mayor of a small town. Players take the role of a former aide to the mayor who has vowed revenge on him, but as he explores the house, he discovers that the situation is much more complex and strange—even by the standards of the mayor—than he initially thought.
Camp Keepalive (2013)
in collaboration with Joel Haddock
A turn-based strategy game for Linux, Mac, and Windows set in a camp straight out of an 80's horror movie. Save the helpless and dull-witted campers from an onslaught of monsters with a team of counselors, each with a special power. Camp Keepalive's gameplay focuses on strategic decision-making, where players must always think a few turns ahead and where one wrong move can lead to a sudden reduction in staff.
Sought (2012)
in collaboration with Joel Haddock
A two-player maze game for Mac and Windows meant to be played by one person, set in a forbidding forest on the eve of a strange holiday. The daughter of the manor lord has run away into the woods and a hunter has been dispatched to rescue her—but there is a reason why the child ran away, and accordingly a decision to make.
Alight (2011)
in collaboration with Joel Haddock
A narrative-centered Flash game about a man who finds himself dreaming about his past. He smells smoke in his dream but doesn't know why. Levels alternate between exploration of a 2D environment and light action elements.
Sanctuary 17 (2010)
in collaboration with Joel Haddock
Inspired by the classic Intellivision title Night Stalker, Sanctuary 17 is a Flash game that expands on the concept with a procedurally-generated maze layout and expanded narrative.
Where We Remain (2010)
in collaboration with Joel Haddock
A procedurally-generated action-adventure Flash game. What appears at first to be a simple quest —find a girl hidden in one of a series of caves on a randomly-generated island—turns out to be much more complicated, and eventually players have to choose between one of several possible endings, each problematic in a different way.
Twine (2009-present)
Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories built in JavaScript. Users do not need to write any code to create a simple story, but can extend stories with variable, conditional logic, images, CSS, and JavaScript. Twine is used in the education field to teach coding and writing skills, in the professional game industry as a prototyping tool, and has been used as the engine of several groundbreaking indie games, including Depression Quest, Firewatch, and Lifeline.
Gimcrack'd (2005-2008)
A web-based anthology of hypertext fiction and nonfiction written using tools that predated Twine, with illustrations provided by Renee Keil. Although Gimcrack'd mostly consisted of my own work, I also published work by other authors on this web site.
Blue Chairs (2004)
A surreal interactive fiction parser game. Players start in a Baltimore house party but must venture through a desert, a birthday party, a cave that changes its geography based on an in-game version of Carcassonne, and the protagonist's own workplace before reaching their final goal. Winner of the Best Game, Best Writing, and and Best Story 2004 XYZZY Awards, voted on by the interactive fiction community.
Mercy (1997)
A short puzzleless interactive fiction parser game set in a world beset by a smallpox epidemic. Players take the role of a doctor in an euthanasia clinic, exploring the state of the world through his eyes and deciding what his role ought to be in it.