Porcupines at the University

Porcupines at the University on itch.io

In this single-player game inspired by the story of the same name by Donald Barthelmes, published in 1970, the player takes on the role of an insurance claims investigator in a world not unlike our own, but that has undergone a catastrophic event known as the Great Porcupining. The player fills out an incident report while guided by the testimony of one of two characters who were involved in a series of incidents revolving around the Podunk University of New York. Once the player reaches the end of the testimony, they must extrapolate whether the attempt to deal with the incident was effective and catalog the information in the physical form, which greets them at the end of the process with nonsense instructions of how to submit it.

I worked as a narrative designer as part of a team of 5 for this project over the course of two weeks in October. As part of my work as narrative designer and writer, I crafted all of the Dean's narrative sections in order to keep a consistent voice and tone, worked with the team to build the absurd and surreal world of the game, and designed the analog form, which the Twine was designed to accompany. Writing the sections for the Dean meant putting myself in the mind of a man who lives each day as if he's retired but has built his entire life around this institution, which faces existential threats like spontaneous transformation into porcupines, and I had to craft a personality beyond just stuffiness and paranoia. Our team's priority in making this game was creating something so absurd it would be funny, but making the player feel the stakes that the characters are concerned with, and drawing them in to uncover more of the story.