I’m currently working as a writer and narrative designer on an upcoming video game called Shadows of Dawn, developed by Next Player Games. In Shadows of Dawn, you wake up in an abandoned lab with no memory and a very opinionated robot companion named B.R.A.D.B.U.R.Y. as your only guide. How did you get there? Who are you? What happened to this lab? What will happen to you if you venture beyond the lab?

Hopefully, that will whet your appetite, because aside from that, there’s not a ton I can say about the game’s core premise or plot at this early date. But I can say that genre-wise, it’s a survival FPS, open-world, action-adventure game with a strong narrative drive and heavy RPG and sci-fi elements.

In my capacity as writer and narrative designer for Shadows of Dawn, I write the story outlines, quest outlines, scripts, character dialogue, in-game fiction, and other writing deliverables for the game. While I’m doing all of that, I also write, update, and maintain the game’s story bible (a sprawling document chronicling the world of the game), often incorporating notes, edits, and ideas from the other members of the Narrative Team.

Here’s a story trailer for Shadows of Dawn. I wrote the script for it:

 

And here’s a teaser trailer for the game. I didn’t write the script for the teaser, but a while back, I put a very special list in the story bible. It was a list of themes that we should explore in Shadows of Dawn, narratively speaking. And the narration in this teaser trailer is based on that list:

 

Also, over the past few months, the folks at Next Player Games have put together a series of videos in which members of the Shadows of Dawn development team talk about their jobs. So here’s a video in which I talk about my work on the game.

 

If you watched the video above, you’ll notice that I talk about a children’s book you find in the game called The Neighbors Are Coming, written by an idealistic author named Norbert Justman, who wrote the book long before the alien collective known as the Mosaic arrived on humanity’s doorstep. In those early days, when the people of Earth knew the Mosaic was on their way but didn’t know to make of this otherworldly hive-mind species, some folks thought that the Mosaic would be benevolent and friendly, like the aliens in Close Encounters or the Vulcans in Star Trek. Norbert Justman was one of those people. Norbert Justman was wrong. Here’s some conceptual art of a tattered copy of The Neighbors Are Coming. This artwork was created by Ari Kleinberg, who’s a Lead Systems Designer on Shadows of Dawn:

Also, remember how I mentioned that in Shadows of Dawn you have a robot companion named B.R.A.D.B.U.R.Y.? Here’s what she looks like:

To find out even more about Shadows of Dawn…

Check out the Next Player Games site HERE.

And you can explore the Next Player Games linktree HERE.