Pixel Ripped 1978
As a Narrative Designer, I joined Pixel Ripped 1978 during the final stages of development to help refine and clarify the game’s narrative exposition.
My main focus was to ensure that the motivations and relationships of key characters, such as Dot (protagonist) and Cyblin Lord (Antagonist), were better communicated to players across the game.
To achieve this, I created a comprehensive narrative revision document outlining opportunities to strengthen story beats through gameplay moments, cutscenes, and dialogue. The document included:
A breakdown of each character’s role and motivation, with proposed adjustments to increase emotional clarity.
Recommendations for visual storytelling, such as using the “Cyblinization” of environments to represent corruption and restoration.
Suggestions for integrating narrative cues into gameplay, reinforcing the player’s sense of progression through environmental change and boss fight structure.
Strategies to connect supporting characters (like the Father and Michelle) more meaningfully to the story’s emotional core and overarching themes.
My goal was to align the story’s emotional arc with the game’s mechanics, ensuring that players could experience the full weight of the narrative through context, rhythm, and play, rather than exposition alone.
This rough animatic was created for a pivotal scene that needed reworking. My goal was to highlight the contrast between the protagonist’s normal world and how it becomes corrupted (Cyblinized) after the antagonist’s arrival. By emphasizing this visual and emotional shift, the sequence aimed to make the protagonist’s motivations clearer to players, reinforcing the story’s central conflict and emotional stakes.
I followed this framework for every scene that needed to be revised, working closely with the director to understand if her vision was getting accross the rewrites.
The final version of this scene is present on the game’s Launch Trailer below, at 00:51.