During my time at Kwalee, my biggest piece of narrative design work to be released was the re-design I did for Dream Build Solitaire, which you can download for Android here, and iOS here.
Between December 2023 and March 2024, as part of my duties as the Game Story Writer for Kwalee’s Casual department, I sat down with the design, code, and art teams working on DBS to enhance the narrative of the game by making it more engaging and less intrusive.
I did this by, while working in suggestions and existing ideas from the rest of the team, designing an entirely new narrative. I kept it within the soft, cosy and comical confines of the game’s existing Tone of Voice, with a prankster Grandma and a metafictional poke at the state of the houses, but raised the stakes by introducing the antagonist immediately and having a strange rot spreading throughout the town’s houses. This was all documented for the team to feed back on, and then implemented into the game’s localisation file by me.
I also wrote the game’s current (as of 08/04/2024) about description on the Play Store and App Store.
Dream Build Solitaire itself is an interation on the typical casual tripeaks solitaire game, where you earn points by collecting star cards, and using new card types to your advantage.
These points are used as inspiration for the protagonist, Zoe, to renovate houses with, and with enough points players can choose how they’d like Zoe to renovate the house she’s currently working on. This then progresses the story, which was designed as a passive feature to make the game feel more immersive, and the renovations more impactful to the game world.