Cameryn Tuliao
I'm a non-binary narrative designer with a game design background, living in South Essex, England. I'm an IG50 winner for 2024, a 2023 TIGA shortlist graduate, a Narrative Department alumni and a previous BAFTA YGD winner. I'm skilled in emotional storytelling, character development, game design and branching narrative.Currently, I'm looking for Narrative Designer or Game Designer jobs that would make great use of my passions and skills in game development.
High Card Heist
A TTRPG game that uses a custom system of 52 playing cards deck about heisting a vault. It takes 2 hours to play between a GM and 2-4 players. It’s best described as an RPG, RNG experience, as every mechanic is based on the luck of the cards. Recently published on DriveThruRPG.Roles: Game Designer, Narrative Designer
Team: Collaboration (layout designer, cover artist)
Development: 2 months
Little Red: Quest Design
A little girl in a red hood struggles figuring out who to trust: A wolf who wants nothing but the best for the forest, or her elusive grandmother of the woods.
Net Carbon
An educational game about carbon capture storage, and how to save energy around the house. It was made for young children, and was showcased in COP 26; Glasgow, Scotland.Roles: Narrative Designer, Game Designer, Sound Designer
Team: 4 members
Development: 6 weeks
Merchant Barks: SpreadSheet
A spreadsheet of barks about a merchant who was a past adventurer.
Current Project: ARTIFICE
Artifice is a game I'm creating as a solo dev on RPG Maker MV to help me understand the engine better. It is set in a fictional fantasy world, where a demonic war took place centuries ago, with humanity being victorious. However, during the tour of the weaponry, the locked away demon becomes sentient, and sets various weapons loose around the museum. It's up to the Historian to take up the swords she once studied, and fix everything.Currently, it is in a early production stage as I get used to the engine's interface. However, you can read some of the game design documents through the button below.
Romace
Project Roles: Narrative Designer, Game Designer, ProgrammerEngine: Renpy
Team: 3 members
Development: 8 months
Asexuality was never an easy thing for Eunice to communicate to others especially with her friends, potential partners and family. However, life slowly goes on and as new relationships develop, Eunice must find the courage to be true to herself, and to the others around her.
Romace is a visual novel game that explores the topic of asexuality and the difficulties of being asexual in today's modern society. It tackles aspects of asexuality rarely represented in media such as the impact of aphobia, the struggles for asexual men, and how asexuality can affect the dating life. It was created as my final year project for my game design course at Abertay.The theme of asexuality and the difficulties of asexuality was specifically chosen with the queer audience in mind. As an asexual developer, it was important to me to shed light towards lesser known aspects of asexuality, and help other asexual people feel represented in video games. This goal was achieved when the game was published as several asexual folks privately reached out to the team saying how "They felt seen with the struggles Eunice (the main character) was facing."
Game Designer Responsibilities:- Create and maintain a game design document to act as the game bible.
- GDD had information like the naming conventions, mechanics, and a timeline for the game development.
- Design different mechanics for the game and to improve player interactivity.
- Set up meetings with the team to discuss where everyone was on the timeline.
- Maintain the GitHub, used as a version control, for the development of the game.
Narrative Designer Responsibilities:- Research different accounts of asexuality and the asexual struggle.
- Develop all of the characters, and collaborate with the art team to show their personality through their art sprites.
- Research how other games handle asexuality.
- Plan out the story with nodes and flowcharts such as Twine and Miro.
- Write and implement the entire game onto Renpy.
Net Carbon
Project Roles: Narrative Designer, Game Designer, Sound DesignerEngine: Unity
Team: 4 members
Development: 7 weeks
Live your life. Capture carbon. Store it into the ground. An educational game about Carbon Capture Storage, made in collaboration with Abertay University, and SSE Thermal.
Net Carbon is an educational game about the carbon capture storage pipeline and how to save energy around the house. The main target audience were young children around primary school ages (5 years old to 12 years old). The game was a client project created for SSE Thermal, and was made under the supervision of Abertay University. Additionally, it was also hosted at COP 26 in 2021, Glasgow Scotland.The game had the opportunity to be presented in the Abertay booth for a science fair made for nearby primary schools. Multiple students came to play the game, and some had engaging discussions with me (the person manning the booth) about the environmental facts shown in the game.
Game Designer Responsibilities:
Design and iterate with the other designer on how the mini-games would work, and how they could explain the carbon capture storage pipeline.
Discuss with SSE Thermal on the carbon capture storage pipeline and how to improve the minigames to reflect the pipeline as closely as possible.
Develop the onboarding for the minigames to allow the player to understand the instructions, and purpose of the game within a first glance. (Inspiration for this was games such as WarioWare and Mario Party.)
Write QA black box and white box test for the playtesters before the COP 26 release.
Narrative Designer Responsibilities:
Research environmental facts that were interesting enough to catch a child's attention, but were still connected to household chores/objects.
Communicate with SSE Thermal on a weekly basis to discuss my research, and my attempts to condense the information for young children.
Iterate on the changes and feedback given by the SSE Thermal team, such as when the information was too dense.
Create the headings for the information short, snappy and ideally with alliteration to grab the children's attention.
Red Maiden, Black Maiden
Project Roles: Solo DeveloperSkills developed: Game Design, Layout Design, Techinical WritingCreated in 2 days for Playing Card Game Jam
A desperate girl with a missing fthare turns to Chrome Steele P.I, an android detective heavily influenced by the fictional greats.
Chrome is led down an icy path of checkered pasts, shabby street santas, and one decidedly dead elf in the pursuuit of justice and redemption.Can he find his own voice and the man at large before it's all too late?
Santa's Secret is a cyberpunk crime noir visual novel game created for winter VN Jam in December 2023. The team consisted of The Narrative Department course alumni. Due to the abundance of fellow game writers I decided to take a more technical role, such as a programmer. As a narrative designer, I found this experience extremely enlightening as it's rare for me to have the opportunity to exclusively be a programmer.
Things I learnt from being a programmer:
- How to use github in a team setting, and how to communicate problems to work through it as a developer.- A deeper understanding of how the programming pipeline works.- An understanding on how simple errors can build up on the programming end, and how to solve these problems prematurely before they reach the programmer.
(For example: Catching the gameflow/ plothole error in the script, and fixing the script before sending it to the programmers.)- How to communicate issues and work through these problems with different departments.
Artifice: Pre-Production
Project Roles: Solo DeveloperDeveloped in RPGMaker MV, currently in Early stages of production
Hundreds of year after the demonic war, there is a tour of the weapons involved in the demonic war to various muesums, including local muesums for the anniversary. However, when the weapons tour reached a small local muesum, the demonic sword becomes alive, and takes control of the muesum. Here, the local historian must take up the same swords she studied and fight the demon sword to restore peace again.
This game is currently a work in progress, and this game is currently in early stages of production. My goals for this game is the following:
Better understsanding in the RPGMaker MV engine.
Showcasing my descrption and lore writing into game engines instead of samples.
Understanding better ways to create narrative through gameplay.
Get better at level design
Level Design
Here is the current layout of the ground floor, including the first initial designs on what it would look like. The design for the muesum layout was inspired by the various muesums across london such as the National History Muesum.
Main Character
This is the character design of the main character "Historian". On the left is the current design created by RPGMaker's MV character generator. On the right side is the mood board with notes to help me quickly understand the character more.
Santa's Secret
Project Roles: ProgrammerDeveloped in Renpy, made in a team of 20, 1 month developmentEngine: Renpy
Team: 20+ members
Development: 1 month
A desperate girl with a missing fthare turns to Chrome Steele P.I, an android detective heavily influenced by the fictional greats.
Chrome is led down an icy path of checkered pasts, shabby street santas, and one decidedly dead elf in the pursuuit of justice and redemption.Can he find his own voice and the man at large before it's all too late?
Santa's Secret is a cyberpunk crime noir visual novel game created for winter VN Jam in December 2023. The team consisted of The Narrative Department course alumni. Due to the abundance of fellow game writers I decided to take a more technical role, such as a programmer. As a narrative designer, I found this experience extremely enlightening as it's rare for me to have the opportunity to exclusively be a programmer.
Things I learnt from being a programmer:
- How to use github in a team setting, and how to communicate problems to work through it as a developer.- A deeper understanding of how the programming pipeline works.- An understanding on how simple errors can build up on the programming end, and how to solve these problems prematurely before they reach the programmer.
(For example: Catching the gameflow/ plothole error in the script, and fixing the script before sending it to the programmers.)- How to communicate issues and work through these problems with different departments.
High Card Heist
Project Roles: Game Designer, Narrative DesignerTTRPG System: Custom card system
Team: 2 members
Development: 2 months
Created for the PocketQuest Jam 2024, High Card Heist is a TTRPG game that uses a custom system that only needs 2 decks of the standard 52 playing cards. It’s made for 1 Game Master, and 2-4 players with sessions lasting around 2 hours of gameplay. The premise of the game is a group of thieves are attempting to steal from a vault that the players create themselves.
The game is best described as an RPG, RNG experience. Everything from the vault, GM’s obstacles, and player stats are determined by the luck of the cards. The system also includes another mechanic where the players can sacrifice their stats to boost their skills in order to succeed in an action against the GM. I’ve included two examples of plays to showcase two mechanics most common in the game.
Game Designer Responsibilities:- Research games, themes and tropes used in the Heist genre for mechanic and design reasons.
- Design and develop all the mechanics and how the luck of playing cards along with player numbers can affect the gameplay.
- Constant iteration with the system through play testing and gathering feedback to make sure everything is balanced.
- Communicating to both the artists and layout designer to keep track of everything happening in the pipeline.
Narrative Designer Responsibilities:- Research games, themes and tropes used in the Heist genre for narrative reasons.
- Develop the narrative pull to the game and intertwining the roleplay aspect of the game with the different mechanics.
- Create different narrative prompts for the GM to assist them with the play session, especially if they are new to GM-ing and the Heist Genre.
- Write all the rules, systems within the rulebook so that it’s easy to understand.
lorelei and Ceona
Project Roles: Narrative Designer, programmerEngine: Twine (Sugarcube 2.0)
Team: Solo Development
Development: 3 weeks
Ceona, an old forgotten god lives on the seabed, deep in the Twilight Zone of the Ocean. One faithful day, she stumbles upon an intruder in her home. A mermaid, named Lorelei. This Game only has the demo, which is their first meeting. The story is an underwater combination of beauty and the beast, and the little mermaid.
What I learnt from this project:
I studied Twine's Sugarcube language, and how various macros can be used for interactivity and branching narratives.
I created a world building document, and fleshed out the lore of the world, even if it's only in passing reference in the current build.
I studied and researched life in the Twilight Zone of the ocean, and included that within the characterisation and description of the world. Minor things like their bioluminescence and how the world is dark with little light are small details included from my research.
Twine Structure:- This is the Twine Structure for Lorelei and Ceona. On the left side is the entire narrative until the flashback scene. On the left side is everything after the flashback scene.
- This is structured like this due to the mechanics within the game. During the flashback scene, Ceona can choose to focus on the flashback, or listen to Lorelei's plea in a back and forth manner. As a result the flashback sequence has to be formatted differently to normal choices.
- I've made most of the choices and have two options to combat scope within branching narratives.
Worldbuilding: The Merrow- On the left is a concept art of what the Merrow could look like, created on Picrew.
- The Merrow is a fictional race that lives in the Twilight Zone of the Ocean, they exist as the background characters that make the world more fantastical.
- I've created an extensive worldbuilding document that details the origins of the Merrow, their culture and the various groups within the Merrow. Please click here for the document.
Shell Shuffle
Project Roles: Game DesignerEngine: Unity
Team: 5 members
Development: 72 Hours
This game was created for the Mini-Jam 159 with the theme of "Ocean". We incorporated the limitation 'as small as possible', we decided to create a twist on traditional merge game mechanics by creating shells of different sizes across the grid, and making the required limitation quite literally the aim of the game! Players must manage their board and create the smallest possible sets of shells from larger shells, as well as merge their different variations.
Game Designer Responsibilities:- Create and maintain the entire game design document.- Design and develop all the mechanics and different resources and how they all relate to each other for the gameplay.- Design and develop the tutorial for the game, along with the programmer.- Implemented the game mechanics into the Unity Engine.
Game Design
Net Carbon: Design
This is a page that further elaborates my game design responsibilities for Net Carbon.
Contains: Mini-game Design
Shell Shuffle: Design
This is a page that further elaborates my game design responsibilities for Shell Shuffle. There is also a button that if pressed, open the game design document for Shell Shuffle.
Contains: Mechanic Design, Game Economy
High Card Heist: Design
This is a page that further elaborates my game design responsibilities for High Card Heist.
Contains: Mechanic Design
Net Carbon: Design
For Net Carbon I was not the only game designer on this team. As such, I will focus on my contributions, which were the mini-games used in the game. Designing the mini-games was an interesting challenge, as we wanted to represent the Carbon Capture Storage pipeline. As a result, I had to look at the pipeline to think outside the box for educational and fun mini-games.
Mini-Game One: Stripping the Carbon
One of the first ideas was looking at the pipeline where Co2 was stripped into two sections, Co2 and the solvent so that they can be transported to different uses of the pipeline. The solvent would be used for further utilisation, and the Co2 would be sent to into storage.I designed a sorting game to mimic the “stripping of the Co2”. I created an illustration to make the point clearer during a voice call with the team and explained the mechanics there. At the time, I wasn’t too sure what the solvent was. All I knew was that the separation in the pipeline could be a good idea to gamify.The team approved of the idea as it was easy to understand, and quick to solve. This mini-game then moved to a vertical slice to ensure that it was possible by the programmers before the client approved it.Once the client approved of the mini-game, the team and I focused on polishing the mini-game. The polish was less on refining the mechanics but more refining the presentation to ensure that the player can understand it with a look. We took major inspirations from WarioWare with their one word instruction, and things like the Mario Party series as the mini-games there were also fast of nature, and were made for children.
Mini-Game Two: Transporting the Carbon
One of the other ideas was transporting the Co2 into the storage deep underground. Stardew Valley’s Fishing mini-game inspired this mechanic. However, since there were people in the team that didn’t play Stardew Valley I created a demonstration and elaborated on how the mechanic would work and how it would differ from Stardew Valley’s mechanic.Once the team understood the mechanic, they approved of the ideas and we created a proof of concept mechanic within the unity engine.The client approved of the mini-game so we focused on polishing the presentation, including the illustrations to emphasis what part of the CSS pipeline we were doing. I once again looked at WarioWare’s one word instructions to make it easier to understand for the target audience.
Shell Shuffle: Design
As I was working with another individual for Shell Shuffle's game design, I will focus on my main contribution, which was the game economy and the mechanics. I will also provide a link to the GDD that I was responsible for creating and maintaining for the game jam.
Game Mechanics
Shell Shuffle is a merging game that has mechanics inspired by existing merging games such as Merging Dragons and Love and Pies.Source ItemsThere are two items in the game that act as “sources” for the other resources that would be merged in the game. One of the sources are Corals. Corals would produce pufferfish and once merged they will become a bomb used to break up shells.The other source item is a Treasure Chest. The Treasure Chest would produce a large shell that would need to be broken into smaller shells to fit the theme of the game jam.Merging in 3sSimilar to the mechanics of Merging Dragons, the only way to merge items to create new things is to have 3 of the same objects be placed right next to each other. By doing it like this, it ensures that there would also be free space.Swapping PositionsSwapping Positions allows items that take one singular space to be swapped with each other. This was implemented to allow quick merging between the items.BinFurthermore, by including a bin as a whirlpool, it would allow bigger items such as big shells to be removed. It also allows objects to be freed up if the players believe that their merging space feels too clustered and dense.
Game Economy
Shell Shuffle has a game economy to provide further clarity on the logic and relationship with the items and the mechanics. As a result, I created a table to make it extremely clear on the relationship between the merging mechanics and the items that can be interacted.
| Source of Items | Item | How many merges | Results |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coral | Pufferfish | 3 pufferfishes | BubbleBomb |
| Coral | Octopus | 3 Octopus | Ink |
| Treasure Chest | Big Shell | Big shell + BubbleBomb | 2 Medium Shells |
| Big Shell | 2 Medium Shell | Medium Shell + BubbleBomb | 4 different coloured small shells |
| Medium Shell | 4 Small shell | 3 of the same coloured shell | Custom Shell |
| Small shell | Custom Shell | Custom shell + ink | Inked Shell |
Shell Breakdown:Big Shell -> 2 Medium Shell (Shell A, Shell B) ->Medium Shell A -> Red Small Shell, Blue Small ShellMedium Shell B -> Green Small Shell, Yellow Small Shell
High Card Hiest: Design
This page is to elaborate some of the mechanics I have developed for my TTRPG game, High Card Heist.
Counting Cards- This mechanic in High Card Heist is the core gameplay for the game. Taken from the card game, War, players and the GM simply needs the highest number between them to win during a turn.- Here, 2-10 cards are respectively 2-10, Jacks are 11, Queens are 12, Kings are 13, and Aces are 14.- RNG aspect: The GM pulls the difficulty cards from their deck, and the player stats were based on their luck from the start of the game.This mechanic had to be balanced several times thanks to consistent feedback from play testing. Previously, the face cards had the same value of 10. This allowed players to have easy access to high numbers. As a result, I bumped up the face cards along with the Ace card. When this happened, it made the game more fair between players and the GM.
Boosted Cards MechanicThis mechanic for High Card Heist demonstrates how RNG of the cards determines everything in the game, and how players can sacrifice their stats to overcome the challenges in front of them.Player 2 can only remove 2 cards when the difficulty was 3 cards due to balancing issues with the boosted mechanic spotted during a play testing session. Originally, players could boost as many cards as the difficulty (3 card difficulty = 3 cards boost), but the result left the mechanic broken, and easy for the players to exploit.
StarTales
Apoco-party: Design
Apoca-Party is a light-hearted resource management game created for the Summer Slow Jam. The game focuses on Cthulhu, who is acting as a party host for the end of the world. As Cthulhu, the player has to keep track of various things such as the music, food, drinks and any mishaps that occur in order to keep the vibe of the party up for when Azathoth wakes up. Failure to keep the vibes up, the party is considered a failure, and Azathoth becomes too depressed to end the world.
My Lady It's Time
Project Roles: Solo DeveloperDeveloped in Twine, Work in Progress
To workWORK
PAGE IN PROGRESS
Writing Samples
If you prefer to look at sample pdf please click this button.
Character Profiles
Two page character profile created for the Advanced Storytelling Sprint by Kim MacAskill. The character is the playable character for an adventure, life-sim game.
Dialogue System
Dialogue system created for the Advanced Storylling Sprint by Kim MacAskill.
Net Carbon: Educational Choices
A narrative document that showcases how educational information was presented to a young audience based on the choices they made in the game.
Interactive Fiction: Lorelei and Ceona
A forgotten Goddess, in the middle of the ocean, deals with an intruder.
Merchant Barks: SpreadSheet
A spreadsheet of barks about a merchant who was a past adventurer.
Little Red: Quest Design
A little girl in a red hood struggles figuring out who to trust, a wolf who wants nothing but the best for the forest, or her elusive grandmother of the woods.
Smart Getaway: Script Excerise
A street-smart lady tries to evade the mob after stealing something valuable from them. (2 pages)
Item Descriptions
A writing challenge posed on twitter about describing the same object differently in 20 words, with no repeat of descriptors.
Dialogue exercises
This exercise is to explore how people of different statuses respond towards the same given problem or task through dialogue. It will go through four separate status: Very low status, low status, high status, very high status.
Games
Please click on any of the games to learn about my responsibilities, and what I learnt from the project.
Romace
A short visual novel game about two asexuals figuring out how to handle family expectations, dating insecurities and being true to themselves.Roles: Narrative Designer, Game Designer, Programmer
Team: 2 members
Development: 8 months
Net Carbon
A short platformer game filled with mini-games made to educate young children about Carbon Capture Storage and how to save energy around the house.Roles: Narrative Designer, Game Designer, Sound Designer
Team: 4 members
Development: 6 weeks
Game Jams Projects
Shell Shuffle
A merging game created for the Mini-Jam Theme: Ocean. For this jam we had to implement the limitation, "As small as possible."Roles: Game Design
Team: 5 memembers
Development: 72 hours
Lorelei and Ceona
An Interactive Fiction Game, currently in a short Demo about a forgotten God and a mermaid.Roles: Narrative Design, Programmer
Team: Solo developer
Development: 3 weeks
High Card Heist
A TTRPG game that uses a custom system of 52 playing cards deck about heisting a vault. It takes 2 hours to play between a GM and 2-4 players. It’s best described as an RPG, RNG experience, as every mechanic is based on the luck of the cards.Roles: Game Designer, Narrative Designer
Team: 3 members
Development: 2 months
Santa's Secret
A cyberpunk crime noir visual novel game about an android P.I trying to find a missing father and a murder at the same time.Roles: Programmer
Team: 20+ members
Development: 1 month
About
My name is Cameryn Tuliao. I'm a non-binary game developer who uses any pronouns (she/he/they) and I have experience in both narrative design and game design.I worked on two game commissions for companies outside of the industry under the supervision of Abertay University, both for six weeks of development as narrative designer. One of these projects is already displayed in my portfolio "Net Carbon", whilst the other is under NDA. Outside of that, I have worked on multiple game jams, some already shared on my portfolio page.I am a person who is constantly looking to learn and improve my craft, as shown in my enrollment of Susan O'Connor's The Narrative Department. Currently I am in the process of creating my first RPG game through RPGMaker MV.In my spare time, I like to read Korean manhwa and webnovels, play/watch TTRPGs and play video games. My favourite genres are roguelikes, resource managers, and RPGs.
Testimonials
Cameryn was one of the most helpful and friendly people I have met in the gamedev community. They were always open to partake in a conversation and shine a positive light, but it didn't end there. Cameryn was usually one of the first people to reach out and highlight other people's strengths and wins, and it was uplifting on all levels. On top of that, the amount of effort and heart they put into their work is unmatched and it shows in everything they produced. Cameryn is the ideal member of any game or narrative design team!- Mario Mergola. The Narrative Department
Awards
IG50 Design & Narrative Winner (2024)
TIGA Graduate of the Year Accolade for Game Design (2023)
BAFTA Young Game Designer, Game Concept award (2015)