Garage Sale is a cozy narrative adventure game released on Steam in June 2024. Made with a team of 5 people over the span of 2.5 years, the game tells the story of a small scavenger hunt throughout Lettuce Village's community-wide garage sale day. Player can collect items with strange backstories, help their quirky neighbors, and maybe even uncover some of the town's secrets...
Garage Sale is 2-4 hours long (depending on how thoroughly players explore) and has over 50 items to collect, over 30 villagers to befriend through side quests, and over 75 unique areas to explore. It has no timers, scores, or otherwise stressful mechanics (although there are some pretty tricky achievements for the freaks out there). It does have a heartfelt narrative about the importance of community that unfolds for players who explore the town enough, though! (And there are worms. A lot of them.)
I served as the director and lead writer of the project and contributed art and programming. I also led promotional efforts for the game and was able to show it off at several conventions including Midwest Gaming Classic 2024 and M+DEV 2024! Garage Sale has also been featured in several local publications like the Wisconsin State Journal, Tone Madison, The Cap Times, and The Daily Cardinal (twice!)
One last quick flex: out of ~100 reviews on Steam, its only negative review is from a guy who was mad that the game has a gay couple.
Garage Sale
Animal town*
Animal Town* is a game jam-winning minimal city builder with an absurdly long title. Made with a team of 4 for UW-Madison and Respawn Entertainment’s weeklong 2024 game jam, Animal Town challenges players to strategically maximize a tiny island town’s population using cards, a little bit of luck, and the power of symbiotic relationships between different animals and biomes. It even has lore, a weather system, a day/night cycle, and a dynamic soundtrack that expands depending on the population and biomes in town!
I led writing and art and contributed programming to the game. This was my first time actually finishing a game jam game, and I’m incredibly thankful that Respawn chose to send our team to M+DEV after selecting our horribly titled game!
*Full title: HELP! I Accidentally Got a Job as the Mayor of Animal Town and Now I Only Have One Day to Plan an Entire Neighborhood: Card Style!
ZERO.initialize()
Zero.Initialize() is a short narrative puzzle game about waking up in a strange place. Made with a team of 5 for Wheeljam (a weeklong jam revolving around the persuasion wheel from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion), Zero.Initialize() challenges players to figure out where they are, whose voice they’re hearing through the walls, and why they can communicate with objects in the room through that weird wheel thingy that keeps popping up. It’s full of unexplained puzzles, subtle environmental storytelling, and intense cutscenes featuring voice acting by THE Gianni Matragrano.
I wrote all of the game’s lore logs, helped with cutscene implementation, and created and implemented various UI elements and hidden scraps of paper (including that awesome coloring page that’s taped up on the fridge, which I did and scanned into the game during the final hours of the jam :P).
Zero.Initialize() is not currently available to play, but it’ll be up on Itch soon — we promise!
More of my work can be found on Itch.io!