Since childhood, I have been both a gamer and a writer. Although I love video games, especially narrative driven games, the idea of writing for games never seriously occurred to me. I ended up joining a Game Jam (an event where video games are made with very limited amounts of time for programming) at the College of Charleston. I showed up not because I thought of games as a career option, but because one of my professors – in theater of all things – offered extra credit for participation. I created the concept and dialogue for a silly little game, and didn’t think much of it afterward.
And then, I got very, very lucky.
I got a message, months later, from someone I’d chatted with at the game jam, asking me if I might be interested in a Narrative Design internship, working on a Queer VR game the CAT Lab was putting together. Of course, I said yes, and went on to interview for the job.
The Critical Art and Technology Lab at College of Charleston, which is run by Dr. Sarah Schoemann, creates digital media that critically engages with broad questions regarding justice, equity and inclusion.
I spent the summer of 2024 working with a team of programmers and 3D modelers, putting together a delightfully quirky little VR game called Dolly’s World.
Dolly’s World is a whimsical, narrative-heavy VR Escape room game.
You play as Bee, a hardworking lesbian food service worker who finds herself inexplicably trapped in Dolly’s World, a surreal, colorful landscape based on a nostalgic children’s TV show that she’s always adored. As Bee navigates this strange place, she must solve puzzles to unravel the mystery of how she got there – and, more importantly, how to get back to her girlfriend, Jess.
Given the limited amount of time the team had to program, I was writing plot at the same time game mechanics and puzzles were being designed. This often meant that I’d be given the various steps for solving a puzzle, and then tasked with weaving them into my narrative in cohesive, complimentary ways. It was a challenge, and a joy.
After the summer was over (and our funding had dissipated), I stayed with the project, working for class credit. The narrative design work was largely finished at this point, so I had a number of additional tasks. I researched marketing, wrote promotional materials (like our soon to be launched steam page), assisted with academic research for a paper, and sourced voice actors.
The game is still in development, and will be released for free in 2025 on Steam and other platforms.