Portfolio
Main
General information about myself, my work, and anything else I figure might be of interest!Click any of the above sections to see my work in those categories.
Writing
My best writing, in the form of narrative in games, interactive storytelling, RPG story design, and narrative analysis.Game Design
A collection of my best game design work, including completed games and prototypes, game design documents, paper and digital prototypes, and retrospectives and postmortems.Gameplay Engineering
Games that I've worked on within the programming side of things, building games from the ground up or just focusing on gameplay.Who are you?
I'm William Lyons. I'm a game developer from northern New Hampshire, currently based in Troy, NY.
What do you do?
I design games, write, and program games. Professionally, I work at Volley on Song Quiz, a guess-that-tune game for Amazon Alexa. In my off time, I make games like my speedrunner Run/Slide/Jump, fiddle around with game prototypes, and write stories like my comic Nat and Reed Have Got This.
Where did you/do you go to school?
I attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 2022 with a B.S. in Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences with a concentration in Writing and a minor in Computer Science.
Narrative in Games
Hawk Foster, Puzzle Detective - Solve a Mystery in a Twine Text Adventure
Play the game on itch.io here.Hawk Foster, Puzzle Detective is a Twine text adventure with a focus on deduction and point-and-click adventure inspired puzzle solving. The game features multiple different "hubs", allowing for clue gathering, with progress being marked by deduction as the player links their clues together.
The game demonstrates my ability in writing a full story arc, characters, and dialogue, as well as my ability in creating puzzles and mysteries.
This Game Loves You - Weaving Heavy Topics Into Games
Content Warning! This game discusses abusive relationships in a pretty heavy, direct way.
This Game Loves You is a board game discussing the topic of abusive relationships. To take on the topic, the group I worked with went head on, creating a game where the players are in an abusive relationship with the game itself. The board goes through five different emotional states (based on Lenore E. Walker's Cycle of Abuse) that the players travel through, navigating an abusive relationship. To bring this narrative in the game, we decided it would be best to have aspects of it throughout the game. I wrote the challenges, successes, and failures with the narrative in mind, designed the game pieces to be as simple and nondescript as possible to bring in an element of being reduced to the board's pawns, and even wrote the rules to reflect it.
The game demonstrates my ability in narrative design and writing.
This Game Loves You is a board game discussing the topic of abusive relationships. To take on the topic, the group I worked with went head on, creating a game where the players are in an abusive relationship with the game itself. The board goes through five different emotional states (based on Lenore E. Walker's Cycle of Abuse) that the players travel through, navigating an abusive relationship. To bring this narrative in the game, we decided it would be best to have aspects of it throughout the game. I wrote the challenges, successes, and failures with the narrative in mind, designed the game pieces to be as simple and nondescript as possible to bring in an element of being reduced to the board's pawns, and even wrote the rules to reflect it.
The game demonstrates my ability in narrative design and writing.
Standards and Practices - Exposition Through Gameplay
Play the game online here.Standards and Practices is a censorship simulator, where the player is put in charge of censoring foreign television before it's broadcasted in the authoritarian country of The State. I wrote and designed the game's narrative, working exposition about The State, its internal politics, and the relations between it and its neighboring countries Eastward and Coastal. Throughout the game, the player is presented with different scenes to censor, revealing more about The State and its values, until they have to censor a live newscast.
The game demonstrates my skill in designing gameplay with narrative in mind and teaching the player about the game world through gameplay.
Interactive Narratives
epilogue for humanity - Experimenting with Choices in a Browser Story
Read epilogue for humanity here.As part of a course I took in 2021 on visual poetry and storytelling and inspired by Jon Bois' 17776, epilogue for humanity is an interactive browser-based narrative. Focused on the themes of time, choices, and climate change, epilogue for humanity is a post-human story, following two unknown entities, Zero and One, as they observe humanity right after the last human on Earth dies. Taking place entirely within dialogue, the story offers up choices at the end of each chapter allowing the reader to follow different threads of their conversation. However, when you pick one thread, you're locked out of the others-- unlike Zero and One, who seem to experience multiple possibilities and timelines at once, the reader is forced to make choices. This ties into the story's themes of climate change, the anthropocene, and post-anthropocene, with choices being made that cannot be taken back.
epilogue for humanity demonstrates my ability to create an interactive narrative that ties its interactivity into its themes and my ability to write characters with distinct dialogue and voices.
Puzzle Detective - An Interactive, Suggestion-Driven Fan Comic
Read Puzzle Detective here.A fan comic for Andrew Hussie's Problem Sleuth, Puzzle Detective is a now inactive interactive webcomic. Throughout late 2020, Puzzle Detective followed the eponymous private investigator as he took on a murder case on a frigid February night. Pulling from Hussie's MS Paint Adventures (including Problem Sleuth and Homestuck), each day Puzzle Detective readers could submit suggestions on what actions the current character should take. This ranged from focused suggestions that pushed Puzzle Detective to solve the mystery to absurd non-sequiturs where Puzzle Detective's friend and informant Inquisitive Dame feels an impulse to eat flowers. Ultimately, the suggestions created an interesting narrative where the readers-- players, all collaboratively controlling the current character-- were attempting to piece together a murder mystery. Adding onto the comic's interactivity, I developed a page that would collect the players' discoveries and ways to check in on the current character's location, inventory, and stats, pulling inspiration from the adventure games that inspired Andrew Hussie's comics in the first place. While it is currently on an indefinite hiatus, Puzzle Detective still demonstrates my ability in writing and planning out a roleplaying game world, handling player interaction, and designing a narrative around player interaction.
The Price is Right - Working with Established IP
Find the game on Amazon Alexa devices or the Alexa app by saying "Alexa, open The Price is Right". You can find the game's Amazon page here.
Note: While some of my work still remains in the game, much of the game has changed and no longer reflects the work I did on The Price is Right.
During my software engineering internship at Volley, I worked on their game Price Tag, which later became the official The Price is Right skill. While my main role was in programming the game in Volley's internal voice engine, I also worked on the game's voice user experience (VUX) by writing the game's script and, for Price Tag, the lines that would be voice acted. When Price Tag became The Price is Right, I started working alongside another writer and designer on creating VUX for games from the gameshow, as well as on converting the main game's script to match the show. This involved having scripts reviewed by the IP holder Fremantle and making adjustments as needed.
I worked on the game during my internship at Volley.
Note: While some of my work still remains in the game, much of the game has changed and no longer reflects the work I did on The Price is Right.
During my software engineering internship at Volley, I worked on their game Price Tag, which later became the official The Price is Right skill. While my main role was in programming the game in Volley's internal voice engine, I also worked on the game's voice user experience (VUX) by writing the game's script and, for Price Tag, the lines that would be voice acted. When Price Tag became The Price is Right, I started working alongside another writer and designer on creating VUX for games from the gameshow, as well as on converting the main game's script to match the show. This involved having scripts reviewed by the IP holder Fremantle and making adjustments as needed.
I worked on the game during my internship at Volley.
A GDC Game Narrative Review - Game Analysis
Find my analysis of the game Duet on the GDC Vault here under the 2019 section, read the analysis here, and see the poster here.
In 2018, as part of RPI's Introduction to Storytelling course, I entered the Game Developers Conference Game Narrative Review Contest, writing a review of the mobile game Duet. I won a Gold prize, and attended GDC 2019. My analysis and the poster I created for the contest are both now found on the GDC Vault, under the list of 2019 winners.
In 2018, as part of RPI's Introduction to Storytelling course, I entered the Game Developers Conference Game Narrative Review Contest, writing a review of the mobile game Duet. I won a Gold prize, and attended GDC 2019. My analysis and the poster I created for the contest are both now found on the GDC Vault, under the list of 2019 winners.
Case Files - A Mystery Storytelling RPG
Find the game on itch.io, or reach out using the Contact page to get a free copy!
In late 2021, I started development on a tabletop RPG with the goals of designing a game that 1. focuses on solving mysteries and provides the game master with tools to create them and options for the players to solve them creatively, 2. encourages collaborative storytelling with everyone at the table, so even if the party splits up they can continue adding to the story, and 3. enables creative character building whether they use options from the game or through homebrew. After nearly a year of design time, I created an original analog RPG system inspired by games like Fate, Monster of the Week, and Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective that meets all three of those goals.
In Case Files, players can create investigators using nine unique character Backgrounds like Detective, Reporter, Mastermind, and Officer, pick out Specialties to define what their investigator is best at, and team up to solve mysteries. Case Files' Suggestions mechanic gives the game master the option to open up failed rolls to the table and take suggestions on how it could get worse, making every roll an opportunity for more collaboration in the game's narrative (and giving the player whose roll failed a bonus if they take a worse outcome).
At GameFest 2022 (an annual event for games students in New York State), Case Files won the award for Analog Game Design.
Case Files demonstrates my ability to design an RPG game system and narrative systems.
In late 2021, I started development on a tabletop RPG with the goals of designing a game that 1. focuses on solving mysteries and provides the game master with tools to create them and options for the players to solve them creatively, 2. encourages collaborative storytelling with everyone at the table, so even if the party splits up they can continue adding to the story, and 3. enables creative character building whether they use options from the game or through homebrew. After nearly a year of design time, I created an original analog RPG system inspired by games like Fate, Monster of the Week, and Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective that meets all three of those goals.
In Case Files, players can create investigators using nine unique character Backgrounds like Detective, Reporter, Mastermind, and Officer, pick out Specialties to define what their investigator is best at, and team up to solve mysteries. Case Files' Suggestions mechanic gives the game master the option to open up failed rolls to the table and take suggestions on how it could get worse, making every roll an opportunity for more collaboration in the game's narrative (and giving the player whose roll failed a bonus if they take a worse outcome).
At GameFest 2022 (an annual event for games students in New York State), Case Files won the award for Analog Game Design.
Case Files demonstrates my ability to design an RPG game system and narrative systems.
Run/Slide/Jump - A Speedrunning Movement Game
Download the game for Windows on itch.io!
Inspired by the incredible, flow-state-inducing movement of Titanfall 2 and the speedrunning of Neon White, Run/Slide/Jump (RSJ) is a game I describe as a movement shooter without the shooting. Initially, the goal was to try and replicate the smooth, fast character controller of Titanfall 2 in Unity; recreating its jump and double jump, sliding down slopes, and sliding into a jump. Soon, I had a pretty faithful version of Titanfall 2's movement, just without the guns-- a movement shooter without the shooting. After playing the simple courses I had created and sharing it with my friends, I began properly designing something new.
Run/Slide/Jump became a speedrunning game that moves at break-neck speeds as I turned strange movement techniques into proper mechanics, designing not to be controlled and precise but to be fast, fun, and smooth. I designed time trials and target trials (so admittedly, there is some shooting) and, as of October 2023, 10 tracks to speed through. By its release on itch.io, I had added online leaderboards to share your best times and a ghost player to watch and race against the best time on each track.
RSJ demonstrates my ability to design and prototype movement in games, fine-tune elements of gameplay to create the smoothest experience for the player, take playtesting suggestions and rapidly build off of them, and take inspiration from other games and use them as jumping off points to create something new.
Inspired by the incredible, flow-state-inducing movement of Titanfall 2 and the speedrunning of Neon White, Run/Slide/Jump (RSJ) is a game I describe as a movement shooter without the shooting. Initially, the goal was to try and replicate the smooth, fast character controller of Titanfall 2 in Unity; recreating its jump and double jump, sliding down slopes, and sliding into a jump. Soon, I had a pretty faithful version of Titanfall 2's movement, just without the guns-- a movement shooter without the shooting. After playing the simple courses I had created and sharing it with my friends, I began properly designing something new.
Run/Slide/Jump became a speedrunning game that moves at break-neck speeds as I turned strange movement techniques into proper mechanics, designing not to be controlled and precise but to be fast, fun, and smooth. I designed time trials and target trials (so admittedly, there is some shooting) and, as of October 2023, 10 tracks to speed through. By its release on itch.io, I had added online leaderboards to share your best times and a ghost player to watch and race against the best time on each track.
RSJ demonstrates my ability to design and prototype movement in games, fine-tune elements of gameplay to create the smoothest experience for the player, take playtesting suggestions and rapidly build off of them, and take inspiration from other games and use them as jumping off points to create something new.
The Price is Right - The Official Alexa Game
Find the game on Amazon Alexa devices or the Alexa app by saying "Alexa, open The Price is Right". You can find the game's Amazon page here.
Note: While some of the bonus games still represent my game design work, much of the game has changed and no longer reflects the work I did on The Price is Right.
During my software engineering internship at Volley, I worked on their game Price Tag, which later became the official The Price is Right skill. While my main role was in programming the game in Volley's internal voice engine, I also worked on many of the game's design elements. I designed the general game flow, balanced its difficulty, and created minigames in the same vein as The Price is Right's minigames. Later, when Volley and Fremantle began working together on The Price is Right, I worked with another designer at Volley on adapting many iconic games from the gameshow to work as voice games. Throughout the process, we held playtests to get opinions from throughout the company, and before each major release, the game went through incredibly rigorous QA, both of which I worked with to ensure that the game could be as strong as possible.
I worked on the game while at Volley.
Note: While some of the bonus games still represent my game design work, much of the game has changed and no longer reflects the work I did on The Price is Right.
During my software engineering internship at Volley, I worked on their game Price Tag, which later became the official The Price is Right skill. While my main role was in programming the game in Volley's internal voice engine, I also worked on many of the game's design elements. I designed the general game flow, balanced its difficulty, and created minigames in the same vein as The Price is Right's minigames. Later, when Volley and Fremantle began working together on The Price is Right, I worked with another designer at Volley on adapting many iconic games from the gameshow to work as voice games. Throughout the process, we held playtests to get opinions from throughout the company, and before each major release, the game went through incredibly rigorous QA, both of which I worked with to ensure that the game could be as strong as possible.
I worked on the game while at Volley.
This Game Loves You - A Board Game About Abusive Relationships
Content Warning! This game discusses abusive relationships in a pretty heavy, direct way.
This Game Loves You is a board game discussing the topic of abusive relationships. To take on the topic, the group I worked with went head on, creating a game where the players are in an abusive relationship with the game itself. The board goes through five different emotional states (based on Lenore E. Walker's Cycle of Abuse) that the players travel through, navigating an abusive relationship. Each of these states has different challenges that escalate in difficulty and specificity, and consequences that impact both gameplay and social elements. We took advantage of the environment that comes with playing a board game-- specifically, not leaving during a game and the aspects of sitting at a table with others-- to bring the players even further into the game as failing a challenge might result in them having to leave the room during other players' moves or not being able to drink or eat. This is meant to simulate the controlling nature of abusive relationships.
Another part of the game's design that feeds into the discussion of abuse is how the game ends. There aren't winners in This Game Loves You; instead, players, after all reaching a certain point on the board, have to vote to leave, and only a unanimous vote can end the game. This is meant to simulate the difficulty of leaving an abusive relationship, especially as players are first able to vote when entering the more pleasant, easy sections of the board.
This Game Loves You demonstrates my ability in game and narrative design. I worked on it alongside Nick Maglio, Derek Borowinski, and Geremy Delgado.
This Game Loves You is a board game discussing the topic of abusive relationships. To take on the topic, the group I worked with went head on, creating a game where the players are in an abusive relationship with the game itself. The board goes through five different emotional states (based on Lenore E. Walker's Cycle of Abuse) that the players travel through, navigating an abusive relationship. Each of these states has different challenges that escalate in difficulty and specificity, and consequences that impact both gameplay and social elements. We took advantage of the environment that comes with playing a board game-- specifically, not leaving during a game and the aspects of sitting at a table with others-- to bring the players even further into the game as failing a challenge might result in them having to leave the room during other players' moves or not being able to drink or eat. This is meant to simulate the controlling nature of abusive relationships.
Another part of the game's design that feeds into the discussion of abuse is how the game ends. There aren't winners in This Game Loves You; instead, players, after all reaching a certain point on the board, have to vote to leave, and only a unanimous vote can end the game. This is meant to simulate the difficulty of leaving an abusive relationship, especially as players are first able to vote when entering the more pleasant, easy sections of the board.
This Game Loves You demonstrates my ability in game and narrative design. I worked on it alongside Nick Maglio, Derek Borowinski, and Geremy Delgado.
Song Quiz - A Guess-That-Tune Alexa Game
Find the game on Amazon Alexa devices or the Alexa app by saying "Alexa, open Song Quiz". You can find the game's Amazon page here.
Currently at Volley, I'm a software engineer on the Song Quiz team, helping update and maintain one of the top skills on Amazon Alexa. I focus on gameplay, helping develop new mechanics and experiments, often working with the game's product lead and the company's game designers to make sure we create fun experiences for our players that are also feasible on the engineering side. I've worked on new player experiences and first time user experiences that help introduce players to Song Quiz, as well as new gameplay mechanics and a complete rewrite of the game into a new structure that enables engineers to work faster without creating tech debt. The Song Quiz team I'm a part of is a small, tight-knit group of engineers that work quickly to make sure the live game is as good as it can be on a largely still new platform like Alexa.
I work on the game at Volley.
Currently at Volley, I'm a software engineer on the Song Quiz team, helping update and maintain one of the top skills on Amazon Alexa. I focus on gameplay, helping develop new mechanics and experiments, often working with the game's product lead and the company's game designers to make sure we create fun experiences for our players that are also feasible on the engineering side. I've worked on new player experiences and first time user experiences that help introduce players to Song Quiz, as well as new gameplay mechanics and a complete rewrite of the game into a new structure that enables engineers to work faster without creating tech debt. The Song Quiz team I'm a part of is a small, tight-knit group of engineers that work quickly to make sure the live game is as good as it can be on a largely still new platform like Alexa.
I work on the game at Volley.
Run/Slide/Jump - A Speedrunning Movement Game
Download the game for Windows from itch.io!
Run/Slide/Jump (RSJ) is a movement shooter without the shooting. Inspired by Neon White, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends (see the design section for more about that), RSJ is a first person game developed in Unity all about speed. The player controller I designed and wrote for RSJ was initially an experiment in replicating Titanfall 2's movement, but soon was developed to encourage odd movement techniques and resulted in absurdly fast, barely-touching-the-ground speedrunning gameplay. The game features time trial tracks, leaderboards, and a ghost player (allowing the player to watch and compete against the best times recorded). Run/Slide/Jump is in active development and updates semi-frequently with new tracks, bug-fixes, and other features!
Run/Slide/Jump (RSJ) is a movement shooter without the shooting. Inspired by Neon White, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends (see the design section for more about that), RSJ is a first person game developed in Unity all about speed. The player controller I designed and wrote for RSJ was initially an experiment in replicating Titanfall 2's movement, but soon was developed to encourage odd movement techniques and resulted in absurdly fast, barely-touching-the-ground speedrunning gameplay. The game features time trial tracks, leaderboards, and a ghost player (allowing the player to watch and compete against the best times recorded). Run/Slide/Jump is in active development and updates semi-frequently with new tracks, bug-fixes, and other features!
The Price is Right - The Official Alexa Game
Find the game on Amazon Alexa devices or the Alexa app by saying "Alexa, open The Price is Right". You can find the game's Amazon page here.
Note: While much of the code that's core to The Price is Right is still mine, the game was picked up by other talented engineers at Volley and may not reflect my work completely accurately.
During my software engineering internship at Volley, I worked on their game Price Tag, which later became the official The Price is Right skill. I wrote a bulk of the gameplay code solo, building Price Tag from the ground up in their internal voice engine using TypeScript. When the game became The Price is Right, I also worked on new minigames based on games from the gameshow, working with multiple other programmers to create voice versions of classic games like the Showcase Showdown, as well as helping create visual elements for games like Plinko. Before each major release of the game, it went through rigorous QA testing, which I followed to ensure that each release was as strong and bug-free as it could be.
I worked on the game while at Volley.
Note: While much of the code that's core to The Price is Right is still mine, the game was picked up by other talented engineers at Volley and may not reflect my work completely accurately.
During my software engineering internship at Volley, I worked on their game Price Tag, which later became the official The Price is Right skill. I wrote a bulk of the gameplay code solo, building Price Tag from the ground up in their internal voice engine using TypeScript. When the game became The Price is Right, I also worked on new minigames based on games from the gameshow, working with multiple other programmers to create voice versions of classic games like the Showcase Showdown, as well as helping create visual elements for games like Plinko. Before each major release of the game, it went through rigorous QA testing, which I followed to ensure that each release was as strong and bug-free as it could be.
I worked on the game while at Volley.
Endless Galaxy - A Space Shooter Roguelike in Unity
Download a prototype of the game for Windows here.
Endless Galaxy (previously Edge of the Galaxy) is a roguelike space shooter created in Unity. The player takes control of a small ship somewhere in the vast, dangerous galaxy, navigating through different sectors. The main gameplay elements currently revolve around controlling the ship, which is based in realistic space physics: when the player moves in a direction, their ship will continue moving that way until the player inputs a different direction. Similarly, firing a projectile moves the player's ship backwards some. In its current form, Endless Galaxy is just an endless mode, featuring shops and five enemy types.
Endless Galaxy demonstrates my ability in programming in C# with Unity, developing 2D games, using 2D physics, and programming enemy AI.
Endless Galaxy (previously Edge of the Galaxy) is a roguelike space shooter created in Unity. The player takes control of a small ship somewhere in the vast, dangerous galaxy, navigating through different sectors. The main gameplay elements currently revolve around controlling the ship, which is based in realistic space physics: when the player moves in a direction, their ship will continue moving that way until the player inputs a different direction. Similarly, firing a projectile moves the player's ship backwards some. In its current form, Endless Galaxy is just an endless mode, featuring shops and five enemy types.
Endless Galaxy demonstrates my ability in programming in C# with Unity, developing 2D games, using 2D physics, and programming enemy AI.
The World's Labyrinth - A Collaborative Game Online and Off
Find the game's online components and download here.
The World's Labyrinth is a game split into two parts: a webapp used to create mazes, and a downloadable Unity game used to explore player-created mazes in first person. The game sets the player in the position of a brave explorer, entering the World's Labyrinth, a vast, logic-defying, ever-expanding maze somewhere underneath Earth's surface. The labyrinth is made up of player-created mazes, which are downloaded using Unity's WebRequest class and then generated into a 3D maze. The webapp uses JavaScript and PHP for its maze maker, allowing users to draw on a small grid and design their maze as they like, including adding traps of different types. The site also features a leaderboard, which is automatically updated when a player quits their game.
The World's Labyrinth demonstrates my ability in creating simple webapps in PHP and JavaScript and working with Unity's upload and download handlers. I worked on the game alongside Dom Favata (map generation and transitions, traps, anything I didn't mention in programming) and Greg Sirkoch (sound programming and music).
The World's Labyrinth is a game split into two parts: a webapp used to create mazes, and a downloadable Unity game used to explore player-created mazes in first person. The game sets the player in the position of a brave explorer, entering the World's Labyrinth, a vast, logic-defying, ever-expanding maze somewhere underneath Earth's surface. The labyrinth is made up of player-created mazes, which are downloaded using Unity's WebRequest class and then generated into a 3D maze. The webapp uses JavaScript and PHP for its maze maker, allowing users to draw on a small grid and design their maze as they like, including adding traps of different types. The site also features a leaderboard, which is automatically updated when a player quits their game.
The World's Labyrinth demonstrates my ability in creating simple webapps in PHP and JavaScript and working with Unity's upload and download handlers. I worked on the game alongside Dom Favata (map generation and transitions, traps, anything I didn't mention in programming) and Greg Sirkoch (sound programming and music).