Peaceland: Choose Your Memory
Narrative Design Lead, January - August 2024
External Narrative Consultant, September - December 2024
Narrative Designer, January - May 2025
Peaceland: Choose Your Memory is a mobile role-playing game set in a post-war zone, 20-30 years after a violent conflict between two ethnic groups.
In the game, you discover the memories of everyday people, trying to determine if the region is going towards peace or back to violence.
Inspired by real memories from Kosovo and the Balkans, this is a game where your choices matter and your empathy is tested.
“Peaceland: Choose Your Memory” is a role-playing video game set in a fictionalized country recovering from a conflict that took place 20 to 30 years earlier. The game begins when a player ... chooses a memory linked to a character whose ethnic/religious/racial identity is not easy to identify. The player must make seemingly small decisions as they face a series of challenges drawn from real memories and factual events as they advance to the next level. The intended and unintended consequences of their choices are revealed along with their character’s identity at the game’s end. The goal is to reach “Peaceland” where they reap rewards from a harmonious and prosperous country. Failure sends them to a country where the perpetual destabilizing threat of conflict is the norm.
Official Description of Peaceland: Choose Your Memory
On this project, I ...
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Designed and ran two brainstorming workshops ahead of the Summer '24 development cycle alongside project director and Kosovo subject matter expert.
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Led a team of 2-6 designers during the Summer '24 development cycle to produce scripts for 15 minute demo.
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Consulted with Fall '24 development cycle on game restructure and scope realignment.
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Served on narrative design team in Spring '25 development cycle to design characters and produce scripts for a new vertical slice of Peaceland.
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Developed game mechanics in conjunction with game designers to fit narrative elements.
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Created and populated narrative catalog for future narrative designers.
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Voice acted with and directed fellow developers to produce sound bank for future use.
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Presented at Narrascope 2024 and the 2024 Schwartz Discover Scholars Showcase on Empathy in Interactive Fiction, using Peaceland: Choose Your Memory as a case study.
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Upcoming presentation at Serious Play Conference 2025 on developing a pro-social game as student designers developers
I worked directly on Peaceland: Choose Your Memory starting in January of 2024, before the game’s first development cycle, to develop and run brainstorming workshops with project director Marcia Hartwell and Kosovo subject matter expert Hana Kaja. Before I even got to work on the game itself, I learned how to build a project from the ground up, how to engage students of all vocations in the generation of narrative ideas suitable for video games, and how to synthesize those ideas into concrete pitches for the summer development cycle to consider.​​
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Development began in May of 2024 at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I was invited into the cohort as a narrative design specialist, and I assumed the team lead position for the Narrative Design team. I led a worldbuilding intensive within the first couple days of the development cycle, within which the team selected two pitches from the brainstorming workshop and fleshed them out.
Throughout June, under my leadership, the Narrative Design team drafted scripts and a worldbuilding document based on the results of the intensive. The editing and implementation processes extended through July, wherein I ran table reads of the scripts with the whole development team. We collaborated extensively with Hana to make sure our scripts were authentic and accurate to Kosovo and post-war zones in general.
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I learned so much from this period, namely that writing is 30% writing and 70% editing. The editing process can be painful at times, but engaging with it and facilitating it at the same time gives one a unique perspective on how a narrative has to adapt to achieve a desired purpose, in the most genuine and effective way, within the constraints of the development cycle.
Additionally, I designed and presented Peaceland: Building Empathy with Interactive Fiction at Narrascope 2024 alongside Marcia and my research advisor, Kristana Textor. Together, we talked about how our team was synthesizing Marcia’s research into a video game and considering empathy building in all facets of Peaceland: Choose Your Memory’s development. We also attended Games for Change 2024, where I had the great fortune of meeting industry leaders from around the world dedicated to making games that leave a positive impact on the world.
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In the Fall of 2024, the game entered a review phase, where the project re-evaluated the content from the Summer '24 cycle and incorporated lessons learned to restructure the game's core principles and development process. I continued to stay involved in the project while I finished my degree at the University of Rochester, facilitating inter-institutional collaboration between my university and RIT.
I rejoined the project as a narrative designer in the Spring '25 development cycle, to help execute on the vision the Fall '24 team developed, and our mobile demo has since received promising results and praise from play-testers hailing from around the world. As the project grows even more, I look forward to watching it develop into a full game in the near future!
