I'm a writer, programmer, and narrative designer interested in designing systems and telling stories.
I'm currently looking for full-time or freelance work as a games writer or narrative designer. For small teams seeking multidisciplinary candidates, I can also offer my experience as both a gameplay programmer and tools designer.
Please direct any inquires to brwarner2@gmail.com.
Need someone to design story mechanics? Write branching dialogue? Conduct research and write lore briefs?
With a background in both writing and programming, I can do everything from write your game to script the content in any language or engine.
I can code everything from low level engine systems to high level tools and pipelines. Need someone whose solved a diverse range of technical problems?
I have experience in everything from Web to Unity to custom AAA engines coded in C++.
Cybernetically enhanced Elizabeth Boldan tries to find herself while working part-time at a Toronto Rub 'n Tug.
I directed, wrote, and developed this game which won 10th place in the 2020 Interactive Fiction Competition. It was built in a custom web engine using React/Redux and a custom integration of Articy's narrative design software. The Articy integration has since been open-sourced on Node's Package Manager.
The game feature's a "cybernetic" gameplay integrated into the interactive dialogue system. Elizabeth's implants make her hyper-sensitive to other people's feelings, and by tapping into them, she can unlock extra dialogue options.
A game with only one ending: breaking up with your abusive boyfriend. An emotional, one-hour phone call simulator.
I worked as the lead writer on this project alongside two other writers who helped bring this terrible man dating Carlee to life. The game was written in Ink, Inkle's narrative scripting language, and featured a clever topic system that allowed the player to hang up at any time and have the boyfriend call back without breaking the immersion of the character.
I also took on the bulk of the project's programming work in Unity, including shipping it for the three platforms we released on.
The third installment in the Luigi's Mansion series. I worked as a tools developer, network programmer, and writer on this project.
As a tools developer, I helped design and develop the new visual effects tool, engine, and pipeline used on this project. I collaborated with artists, designers, and programmers to help build a new, flexible system that would suit the needs of all parties.
As a network and gameplay programmer, I developed the networked arbitration system that resolved conflicting actions across multiple networked machines in the game's scarescraper mode, as well as working on the multiplayer mode's procedural generation system and implementing gameplay features created by the game's designers.
As a writer, I helped write and maintain character bios and other internal story documents for the animators and designers. I also drafted dialogue for the Director ghost, Morty.
A C++ port of Inkle's Ink runtime with integration support for Unreal Engine.
This is an open-source project I started to add native support for Ink to Unreal. Ink is a popular scripting language for writing interactive stories that power's Inkle's 80 Days and Heavan's Vault games. Currently, there is support for integrating Ink into Unity and Javascript, but there's a gap in support for Unreal.
A game about reaching out to your niece. A game about helping your Uncle with his taxes.
Built on the same custom engine as Sense of Harmony, I directed, wrote and developed this game for the 2020 WordPlay festival. The pitch was sent to their judging panel and selected for commission for the festival. The Early Access version now available was developed over a rapid 2 month development cycle.
The game features a dual POV dialogue system I designed specifically to illustrate the theme of miscommunication between the two characters. I also designed and implemented the "tax-filing" system where the player must leverage both character's knowledge to complete the Uncle's tax forms.
An open-source Javascript runtime for loading and executing story data exported from Articy's narrative design tool.
Articy is a popular tool for narrative designers and writers creating story-heavy video games. It currently powers such successes as Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You and Disco Elysium.
While the tool currently supports integration with Unity and Unreal, there is no integration available for web games such as those built in Node. This project is my attempt to fill this gap.
A 4-player cooperative side story in the Metroid Prime universe. I worked as a tools developer on this project.
I took the lead in developing the new cutscene authoring process and tools for this game. This involved changes to the studio's internal game engine and designing and implementing new tools in collaboration with the animators and artists who would use it. I ran user trials, iterated based on their feedback, and worked to create a new intuitive interface that was similar as possible to video editing software the animators were already accustomed to using.
I also developed a debugging suite for the studio's mission scripting system used by the game's level designers. This included breakpoints, variable watches, and other features one is accustomed to in other debugging suites like Visual Studio.
An interactive novella about being a hero and only making everything worse.
I wrote this game for several years while working at Next Level Games. This included working with a musician in producing the game's atmospheric soundrtack and designing the unique choice system that focused less on choosing exactly what the character said and did and instead on what kind of action they took. In this game, choosing to look or think about a topic are as important a choice as where to go or what to reply to.
A visual novel where a sex worker turned private detective investigates infidelity.
This was my first video game project I developed while studying at the University of Waterloo. I wrote all the game's dialogue, designed the mystery, and developed and shipped the game using Unity.
The game's dialogue and narrative logic were all written in Scrivener, a piece of screenwriting software. I wrote a custom loader and parser for that software's export format to load the data into Unity.
A game about going mad in a one-minute time loop of your ship exploding again, and again, and again.
This game was produced for the 2014 GI Game Jam at the University of Waterloo. I worked with two others: a fellow designer/writer and an artist to produce this small game. With the other writer, I designed all the game's parallel plot lines and puzzles and wrote the dialogue. Each plot had to be precisely timed so it took exactly 60 seconds to play out.