game design
Happy New Year from Li’l Nosferatu!
Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to 2026! And welcome to my “year-end wrap-up” blog post for 2025. Look, before you say anything: yes, I’m writing a “year-end” post the day after the year ended. Which is probably against the rules, but as I’ve learned over the years, I don’t like rules. Rules are stupid. Also, I was busy yesterday.
So. Here are some of the best things that happened to me in 2025:
I wrote many, many books. Most of them were for kids. Some of them were for adults. Here are the titles of some (but not all) of those books:
The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions.
The Fantastic Four Little Golden Book.
Stitch: Out-of-This-World Numbers.
Also, in January of 2025, I began working as a writer and narrative designer for an upcoming video game called Shadows of Dawn, which is being developed by Next Player Games. Currently, I’m still working on the game with the good folks at NPG.
And as you may recall, back in 2023, I wrote two episodes of the animated preschool series Hey! Fuzzy Yellow. In 2024, one of the episodes began airing and streaming. But starting in 2025, both episodes (“Boomerang Jelly Car” and “Sculpture Jam Abstract”) began airing and streaming. I wrote the scripts and the song lyrics for both episodes. As of this writing, Hey! Fuzzy Yellow still hasn’t begun airing or streaming in the US, but it’s available in various countries in Europe, Central America, and South America.
I also wrote the script for a Passover-themed children’s audio drama, titled “Mort the Misinformed Morsel of Matzah,” which was released in the spring of 2025 as part of Yoto’s 5-Minute Spring Holiday Stories collection. The title character, Mort, was even voiced by a friend of mine, Eli Schiff!
And there are several other projects I worked on throughout 2025, some of which will come out this year. I announced one of them, 96 Facts About Chappell Roan, in my previous blog post. (That book comes out on January 13th.) But I’ll announce some of my other upcoming projects ASAP. Please keep checking this site for more info!
BTW, I wouldn’t have worked on any of the aforementioned projects without the book editors, video game producers, and TV showrunners who gave me these writing gigs in the first place. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who hired me in 2025 (or really, anyone who hired me at any time, ever). And I mean that.
You may also be wondering about the “Baby New Year” photo which adorns this blog post. See, to usher in the new year, I’ve put a “2026” sash around a puppet I built. I call him “Li’l Nosferatu.” If you’re obsessed with me (and why wouldn’t you be?), you’ll notice that I’ve occasionally posted pics of Li’l Nosferatu on social media during the past couple of years. For today’s purposes, Li’l Nosferatu is playing the part of Baby New Year.
Someday, I’ll explain the backstory behind this puppet, because there is indeed quite a bit of backstory there. Basically, I built the puppet for a project which never came to fruition. But more on that some other time.
And to anyone who’s reading this, I just wanted to wish you the best for a wonderful new year!
“Shadows Of Dawn” Kickstarter Launching In 2 Weeks!
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. The Kickstarter campaign for the game launches on Tuesday November 11th, 2025. Which is in two weeks.
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:
Hey, 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:
Last but definitely not least, before you go, don’t forget…
