Calame
A Tactical-RPG based on the eponymous book series.
• Context: Nextale's first original IP
• Role: Narrative Designer
• Period: June 2025 - June 2026
• Engine: Unreal Engine 5
• Role: Narrative Designer
• Period: June 2025 - June 2026
• Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Game Pitch
"The tyrannical Light King manipulated the Calame, a transcendent magic that transforms words and beliefs into truth, and made himself a god. His power is all but absolute. Lead the rebellion in this tactical RPG packed with reality-bending twists."
This adaptation of a critically-acclaimed fantasy novel was the project to hone my Narrative Design skills working with many talented people.
Narrative Design
Narrative Coherence. My main job as the Narrative Designer was bridging the gap between the writer and the design team. This meant leading a lot of meetings, discussions and writing comprehensive documentation, to ensure the author's vision was respected throughout development.
Designing Narrative Features. As part of a major rework of the game's systems and fantasy, I got to design the new flow of Choices within the game, the Alignment system and added a Camp Talk feature: optional narrative sequences that provide context and characterization, letting the player breathe a little in between major story bits.
Writing. I wrote dialogues for the main cutscenes and battles, object descriptions, documents and codex entries, as well as Side Quests and optional, light-hearted sequences.
Tailoring Cutscenes. I worked a lot with Unreal Engine's Sequencer to edit the game's cutscene, implementing dialogue and fixing frequent quirks within the scenes.
Implementation. Using Google Sheets and UE5 Data Tables, I implemented all story-related assets to the engine: dialogues, character emotes, UI elements and Codex entries.
Game Design & QA
Onboarding. I was responsible for the game's tutorials and Onboarding scene, ensuring the learning curve wasn't too steep or too flat. This was no easy task as the game had to teach its complex story and universe at the same time as its main mechanics.
Playtest Handling. Part of my job as a designer was to define a playtesting pipeline: what needed to be tested and how it would be handled, as well as analysing playtest data to provide clear guidelines for the end of production.
