Play Hooky Studio
This cozy roguelike strategy game was created in just nine months by a team of developers from Olympia, WA. As the narrative designer, I was tasked with crafting an all-ages story with quirky characters suited to the game’s mechanics, art, and whimsical tone.
My responsibilities included:
- Crafting a cohesive story within an existing world.
- Communicating regularly with designers, artists, composers, programmers, and sound engineers to ensure my story matched the team’s overall vision.
- Writing dialogue, narrative poetry, and choice events that would prove both accessible to middle-grade gamers and engaging to adults.
- Creating a cast of characters suited to the story’s tone and target audience, including three distinct antagonists and a recurring gnome merchant.
- Writing “initial,” “replay,” and “true ending” versions of main plot points to reward player curiosity and add variety to the cyclical roguelike format.
- Crafting and maintaining a detailed story bible, including character bios, story/chapter outlines, event prose, and scripts.
- Editing press releases, UI elements, tutorial prompts, and game trailers.
- In-engine implementation of text and visual assets (Godot.)
- Creating a contextualized localization spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
- Helping to create and moderate promotional events in the official Discord Server and showcasing the demo at expos and developer feedback events.
Story
Fairy Circle follows a plucky fairy called the Forest Keeper as she strives to protect her realm from a shadowy force called “The Gloom.” Throughout her journey, she makes new friends, learns powerful spells, and faces off against rival spirits who test her tenacity, wits, and patience.
The plot of Fairy Circle is cyclical, so I wrote three variations to enhance replay value and reward curiosity, including a “true ending” timeline which can be unlocked by meeting certain in-game criteria.
Characters
Fairy Circle’s characters needed to be accessible to a middle-grade audience and compelling to adults. Given the game’s cozy nature, it was important to craft non-violent antagonists to add stakes to the tale without spoiling the tone. The protagonist’s personality was left largely to player choice, with dialogue options ranging from earnest to playfully wry.
Additional characters I created for this game include 15+ NPCs for random events, a silly gnome merchant, and a clairvoyant mini-game host.
Narrative Elements
In keeping with the singsong, fairytale tone of this game, the primary narrative elements I used were random events, poems, and boss dialogue vignettes. Subsets of events were tethered to specific story acts so they could reference the season, weather, and local antagonist, making the realm feel richer.
Event Sample:
Poem sample:
Boss Vignette Sample:
To play our free demo or purchase the game, check out the steam page!