Curtain Call
Writer, Producer
Team Size: 5
May 2021 - Jan 2022
Embedded Files
Curtain Call is a visual novel about (literally) breaking through social masks by forming meaningful connections with incredibly deep personalities.
I was the producer and one of three writers on Curtain Call. It began as a fun summer project but eventually transitioned into a Directed Research at the University of Southern California under Professor Peter Brinson as the Fall 2021 semester began. The project was developed in Unity with the Yarn Spinner plugin and GitHub for version control.
As a writer, I helped plot character arcs and compose compelling branching dialogue for three distinct and complex characters. The game explores complex issues such as intimacy, vulnerability, and how we present ourselves to the world. In turn, I learned to write with sensitivity and realism, while keeping an overall fairly lighthearted tone in accordance with dating sim genre conventions. I also learned to be flexible and rapidly edit my work, as each piece of content was read and playtested countless times. In addition, I helped give editing notes to the other two writers on the project.
Specifically, I wrote the following pieces of content:
Arjun: Introduction, Date 1, Date 4, all 5 conversations
Billie: Introduction, Date 1, Date 3, 3 conversations
Jodie: Introduction, Date 1, 3 conversations
Arjun Date 1
Billie Date 1
Jodie Date 1
As the producer, I oversaw and managed our production timelines using Jira and agile development techniques I learned while interning as a software engineer at the startup, Maskil. I also ran our daily standups, scheduled meetings with outside consultants, and recorded meeting notes. Even with a small team like ours, coordinating production across engineering, art, and writing taught me a great deal about organization and collaboration.
One major challenge we ran into during production was scope. Originally, we had plans for each character to have 5 dates and 7 conversations. The final game has 4 dates and 5 conversations per character. The most challenging decision we made during this process was one that challenged me as both a writer and producer: the decision to rewrite the Arjun route in December 2021, two weeks from when we were supposed to finish the game.
Curtain Call was a finalist for two New Media Writing Prizes in 2021, the Opening Up award and the Student Entry award, and is available to download for free on Steam!
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