New Tabletop Game Coming Soon! As part of my work at the Partnership in Education, my coworker and I are designing another tabletop game slated for release sometime during the summer of 2022. Most of the details are still under wraps, but I'll make updates as I can.

Boos at the Bottleforge
As a part of Someday Games, I was lead writer and designer on this project. I was also responsible for creating the accompanying maps.

After the death of the renowned brewmaster, Ebrom Bottleforge, strange things begin to happen in the sleepy northern town of Talons Reach. Wild rumors spread that the local brewery is haunted by some evil spirit known as the Yeasty Beasty. Ebrom’s granddaughter, Cheer, is left in charge, but she is finding it hard to keep her employees from deserting her and leaving the brewery unmanned. She is determined to find capable individuals to spend the night at the Bottleforge to find out what is really going on when the lights go out.

In Boos at the Bottleforge, it’s up to you and your party of intrepid adventurers to get to the bottom of this mystery! Do you have what it takes to save Cheer and her brewery?

Boos at the Bottleforge is available on the Dungeon Master’s Guild.

Cover art by Layla Fauth.

Fantastic Ancestries
As a part of a collaborative project for Someday Games, I designed a new playable race for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons based on the title character from L. Frank Baum's The Patchwork Girl of Oz. I was also responsible for layouts, text edits, and revision throughout.

Get ready for adventure with some new additions to the fantasy line up! Whether you play as a small but mighty dodian, a tiny heroic acorynn, a willful stuffed patchwork person, a charismatic and flamboyant harlekin, or a stoic and determined sharkfolk, we hope that each will bring their own whimsy and magic to your game. We are honored that you have chosen to add these colorful people to your adventures. 

Fantastic Ancestries is available on the Dungeon Master’s Guild. 

​Cover art by Joey Papalia.

A Stay at the Ursa Manor
As a part of Someday Games, I was lead writer and designer on this project which was my first of soon to be several published RPG adventures. I was also responsible for creating the accompanying maps.

Are you craving a little mystery in your adventure? Could you use a little Agatha Christie in your Dungeons and Dragons? Get ready for a night of fantasy, horror, and colorful suspects in this whodunit one-shot A Stay at the Ursa Manor, a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure for low-level play.

The story begins with a party of adventurers finding refuge from a harrowing snowstorm in the home of a newly located nobleman, Uryene “The Bear” Bumpford, who is currently playing host to several local figureheads as they discuss important matters of land ownership. After the party discovers a grisly murder, they must work together to solve the mystery in a house full of very capable suspects. Can you solve a Clue styled murder mystery in the world of Dungeons & Dragons?

A Stay at the Ursa Manor is available on the Dungeon Master’s Guild.

You Make Me Sick
You Make Me Sick is a 2020 International Serious Play Silver Metal Winner. This is a total redesign of a game created by the Partnership in Education in 2007. I was responsible for co-designing the game as well as updating original assets and creating new art.

In this board game, you will fight 11 common diseases while you learn about the immune system. As you move around the game board, you will encounter disease causing viruses and bacteria, so watch out! You will also learn more about staying healthy, vaccines, antibiotics, and steps you can take to prevent the spread of disease. Can you make it home from the hospital by defending your body from infection?

A printable PDF version is available on the Partnership in Education's website.

Dermis Defense
Benji is your typical teenager. He loves to hang out with his friends, play guitar, and he has acne. When his breakouts start taking a toll on his confidence, will he be able to clear up his skin and gain the confidence to perform his new guitar solo in front of his whole school?
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Follow Benji's story and help him beat his breakouts and learn about the immune system in this fast-paced combo of storytelling and gameplay.

This was a redesign of a game that was made for the Partnership in Education over a decade ago called Poor Benny. I was responsible for updating the art and UI as well as cowriting the new story to make the app more relatable to the target audience.

Dermis Defense is available on all mobile app stores.

Dig In! An Excavator Game
This is one of the most recent games that I designed for Simcoach Games. The goal is to spread awareness of the career opportunities available in the construction industry in an effort to reduce the growing skills gap. Players are challenged to complete realistic tasks with finesse and skill just like a real excavator operator. When tasks are completed, the app informs players that there are paid apprenticeships available and provides links to the local operators union of Western Pennsylvania. 

The controls  were designed to mirror the real ones inside the cab of an excavator. The Simcoach team traveled to the local operators training facility to get hands on experience operating one. We also worked closely with Local 66 to make sure that the tasks in the app are true to those on actual job sites.  

Besides our formal scheduled playtests with the target audience, I personally conducted several informal tests after work hours with members of the PGH Comic Art Meet Up group. It was important to ensure that the game was engaging and the controls were intuitive. Adding these extra playtests allowed us to observe gameplay and iterate the game more than would have otherwise been possible.
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Booeys: A Journey Home
This app was developed by Simcoach Games in partnership with the Consortium for Public Education to provide a more engaging career exploration experience than the standard career interest surveys. I was lead designer and writer on this project which is a story based quiz that follows Hubsley, an outcast booey, who needs the player's help to find his way back home.

Players help him make decisions by telling him what they would do
in every situation the booey comes across. Through their adventures, the player may even learn a little about himself. At the end of the experience, the player is shown his Holland Code scores to aid in career exploration and is given links to more information about finding a career that meets the player's unique interests.

To test the validity of this app, players were given a short interest survey as well as asked to play through the story. The scores from both were compared to see if there was an correlation between the two. We began to see trends once we added enough situations into the story. 

BiblioTech
BiblioTech is an interactive reading platform which engages players through exploration. The player's decisions impact how the story unfold. It was developed with the Partnership in Education at Duquesne University. 

I was the lead artist and designer for all four apps in the BiblioTech series. I worked closely with the project partner to develop interactives, illustrations, animations and mini games to support the text. The goal of these apps is to engage young people in reading, learning, and taking notes to support an argument. 

The two Life with a New Liver stories are currently being used in a study at the UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh to help liver transplant patients know what to expect before, during and after surgery. They explain the transplant process in a simple and relatable way to reduce anxiety in patients and help them on the way to a health life with a new liver.​

Police Professionalism: Noble Cause
Simcoach Games developed this web-based app in partnership with Pittsburgh Bureau of Police to eliminate avoidable ethics violations and other breaches of professional conduct by providing officers in training a common experience with making ethical decisions.

I was the lead artist and designer for this scenario based narrative game. The team worked closely with officers to develop the content, situations and their consequences in the game to ensure that the experience is as true to life as possible.

Scenarios are displayed to the player at random. The player makes dialog choices, some of which contain ethical decisions, that determine the outcome of each scene. 

Crimson Dilemma
This game was created to supplement the business ethics curriculum at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. It is a story-based game that allows each student to have a common experience where they can make ethical decision and see the outcomes. This game is used by thousands of students each year and is used as a point of class discussions.

This was the first game where I was both the lead artist and lead designer. The team worked closely with the faculty team and  writers to develop characters and a narrative to support the ethical decision scenarios. The player makes dialog choices to advance the story. Some of these include ethical decisions that require the player to also pick from a reason for their decision. The player's choices change the outcome of the narrative.

Heart Failure Coach
The goal of this game is to reduce the readmission of heart failure patients within the first month of discharge from the hospital. Heart Failure Coach engages players to interact with and advise Simon, a character with congestive heart failure who has recently been released from the hospital. The game reinforces the critical steps necessary for heart failure patients to remain healthy and avoid readmission. This game was produced in partnership with UPMC, and the team worked closely with doctors and hospital administrators to create the content.

This is the first game that I co-designed for Simcoach Games and remains one of my favorites. I participated in the focus groups and playtests with actual heart failure patients and witnessed first hand how much a game can impact someone's life.

By making sure that Simon always takes his medicine, weighs himself everyday and knows when to call his doctor, the player can help Simon stay out of the hospital. The app also shows the consequences of not following the guidelines.
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K.I.C.K.
My first experience in the gaming industry was designing characters and levels for the Kid’s Interactive Creation Kiosk (K.I.C.K.) for Electric Owl Studios. These kiosks are installed in hospitals in 27 states across the country. They provide children with a positive outlet for anxiety in the waiting room.

The main K.I.C.K. games that I built levels for are Picture Town, Search'n'Find and Magic Coloring Book as well as the music creation game specifically made for a local radio station, WYEP, called Zoo Beats.