BLACK BANSHEE STUDIOS AND CELLEC GAMES
Lead Narrative Designer and Producer
April 2022 - February 2023
Black Banshee and CelleC Games are partner studios that focus on creating games for entertainment and games for education respectively.
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Quain's main responsibilities include script writing, game writing, narrative implementation, game/narrative design, team management, and production management.
GAMES
ESCAPE THE UNKNOWN: AWAKEN THE REALM
A visual novel RPG set in a fantasy world
A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE - ADAPTING AN ACTION RPG
Awaken the Realm was not an original game concept. Originally, the game was called Escape the Unknown, an ambitious top-down action RPG developed by Black Banshee Studios. Being a student studio with new students rolling in and graduating students rolling out every month presents a difficult challenge for projects with long development timelines.
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The original game, Escape the Unknown, was shelved by the studio after nearly a year of development, having changed production hands several times as students took on the project and gradutated without seeing any benefit to their portfolios. The shelving of Escape the Unknown happened around the time I entered the studio in the 4th month of my Master's program, and the morale hit on the studio was massive. Having an unreleased game meant all the people who worked on Escape the Unknown didn't have a massive project they could add to their portfolio, and this created a rift between faculty and student expectations.
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After working on Dissent and then leading production and narrative on Coalescence, I was in my 8th or 9th month of the 12 month program, and I was looking to lead a game of my own (Coalescence being a project I took over production responsibilities on after the original producer and narrative coordinator graduated). I pitched several games to the studio that received little traction, mainly due to development timelines and talent availability at the studio (many narrative and game designers, not many engineers or artists). It was while I was having a conversation with the previous narrative coordinator and friend, Lauren Adzima, that we got the idea to revitalize Escape the Unknown as a visual novel.
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The more we considered this, the better the idea felt. The narrative framework for Escape the Unknown was already written and voiced, we already had environment and character art we could use as backgrounds and character emotes, as well as music and sound effects we could repurpose, and we had many designers who were now fairly experienced with the Ren'Py engine. We would need to bolster the sparse narrative of the original game, and create our fair share of new narrative, game, and system designs to make it work as a visual novel, but the scope was drastically reduced compared to creating a brand new game from scratch.
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Above all other benefits, however, came the knowledge that all the original creators of Escape the Unknown would be able to see a version of their game released that they could put on their portfolio.
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When presented to the studio, both leadership and students were excited by the unique challenge such a game would bring.
NARRATIVE DESIGN
As mentioned in the introduction, when beginning writing on EtU: Awaken the Realm, we already had an existing narrative framework: a protagonist who wakes up with amnesia who fights through a series of bosses and locations to uncover her past and save her family.
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Great! Easy peasy, right? Well . . .
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The original narrative was told exclusively through limited dialogue between the protagonist and the bosses she fought. Adapting that narrative into a visual novel meant all the real-time actions the player would make in the original game, such as exploration, enemy combat, item discovery, etc, had to be presented to the player in written format so they could choose where to go in a point-and-click adventure format instead.
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We had to find a way to provide the player with additional context and description, inner monologue, and a lot of world building that didn't exist in the original game and was necessary for the adaptation. We accomplished this goal in a few ways:
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Read, annotated, and outlined the existing narrative structure and placing it in the visual novel
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Designed exploration, collection, and combat systems that stayed true to the original player fantasy
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Identified and tasked out work for narrative scripts and bespoke systems
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Decided on needing one additional voiced character, and otherwise relying on inner monologue and descriptions
SYSTEMS DESIGN
Creating an RPG within a visual novel required several bespoke systems. We needed these systems to be fun, rewarding, and in-line with the player fantasy. We decided on several systems, most of which I helped design and implement.
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An interactable map the player would discover per level, with encounters in each room.
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A turn-based combat system used to battle monsters with an optional quick-time event mechanic
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An inventory and equipment system used to track discovered items and what is currently equipped
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A collectable lore tab used to track the secondary storyline of the protagonist's family tree and enemy weaknesses learned through exploration
PRODUCTION
As I mentioned in the introduction, this was going to be my last project while at Black Banshee Studios, and the timeline from conception to my graduation was only 3 months. We ran on an agile framework, so that boils down to roughly six two-week sprints.
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We were not going to finish the game in six sprints.
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Being a student game, and most of us having very little experience scoping projects accurately at the time, I knew it would take longer than six sprints. I was counting on it, and I pitched the game to the studio with a more realistic (though still not quite long enough) timeline of 8-10 sprints. Which meant I would be leaving the studio partway through development.
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I saw this as a major risk. Escape the Unknown had been shelved after almost 12 months of development because it switched leadership hands so many times, and I was worried EtU: Awaken the Realm might fall into the same development hell as its originator. However, there was no way we were going to finish the project in six sprints without needlessly crunching our dev team.
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So, I did the only thing I could do. I prepared the project for my departure as best I could, and trusted the talented developers I was working with to finish the project with me gone. I created onboarding documentation for the game engine, notated my code and created a script structure that was (hopefully) easy to read, worked with the producer who would take over when I was gone, and held regular meetings with the team to make sure we were on the same page.
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After I was gone, I was available in a limited capacity for another 2-3 sprints, helping to finish development, write a few final scripts, and performing some last-minute polish on the systems I had contributed to. Once I started work at Epic Games in February of 2023, I was no longer available to assist getting EtU: Awaken the Realm over the finish line outside of answering follow up questions and providing story context when needed.
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Thanks to the incredible team that loved the project just as much as I did, Escape the Unknown: Awaken the Realm was published in April of 2023.
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FINAL THOUGHTS
Escape the Unknown: Awaken the Realm was a development experience like no other (though, in truth, I could say the same thing about any game I've worked on). There were some challenges, the biggest being the fact I knew I would leave the studio before the game was completed, but those challenges were overcome through planning, communication, and an incredible team of developers.
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What I value the most from Awaken the Realm, however, is what it meant to those students who had worked on the original aRPG who never got to demonstrate their work in their portfolios. A year after the original game was shelved and a rift was created within the studio whose repercussions were felt for months afterward, the dozens of developers who worked on both games, whether writers, designers, programmers, artists, producers, testers; were able to proudly show their work to the world with a released game.
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That is what I am most proud of. Both in this project, and in my entire time at Cellec Games/Black Banshee Studios.
COALESCENCE
A noir visual novel created with Ren'Py
BEST STUDENT GAME - SILV-E AWARDS
I am very happy to share that Coalescence won Best Student Game at the SILV-E Awards in 2022, part of the Southern Interactive Entertainment and Games Expo, or SIEGE.
NARRATIVE DESIGN
Coalescence is a game with a heavy emphasis on narrative, art, and audio, and is a direct sequel to Dissent. My responsibilities on the project ranged from writing copy and marketing materials, to encounter and choice design.
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My main responsibility, however, was in script writing. As a visual novel with three playable stories (selected from a character selection screen), each line, whether spoken or descriptive, was visible to the player. Legibility, consistency, and mystery were vital in creating an enjoyable and engaging experience.
LEADERSHIP
I started on Coalescence as a Narrative Designer, but my responsibilities quickly evolved into Narrative Lead as well as producer.
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As Lead Narrative Designer, I worked with a team of 6-8 Narrative Designers across multiple projects that were in development at the studio at once. With Coalescence's narrative needs, many of these team members were writing on the project at some point.
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As Producer, I led Coalescence's multi-disciplinary team across 8 sprints. This involved helping team members involved with narrative, art, audio, systems programming, level design, and marketing.
Coalescence was an incredible project, and our team's hard work really paid off when it came to the SEIGE event. I am extremely proud of my contributions as Lead Narrative Designer and Producer on Coalescence.
DISSENT
Dissent is a choice-based visual novel created with Ren'Py.
NARRATIVE DESIGN
Dissent was my first project at Black Banshee/Cellec. I came on toward the end of the product's production, and was primarily tasked with creating marketing material set inside the game's universe.
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The first of these was several ficticious newspaper articles concerning aspects of the game's villain, Moniker Labs.
MARKETING MATERIAL
The other piece of marketing content I created for Dissent was redacted articles surrounding Moniker's corrupt dealings.
Since I came on late in the project, the majority of the game's narrative content was completed. I was extremely happy to be able to contribute to this project through its marketing material while also being able to stretch my narrative muscles.