Stevie Rodriguez
Game Writer | Narrative DesignerCurrently working on:
- Portfolio updates (Coming soon!)
About Me
Stevie Rodriguez
Game Writer | Narrative Designer
★ Currently Playing: Disco Elysium
★ Favorite Games: Deltarune/Undertale, ENA: Dream BBQ, In Stars and Time, Portal 2, Slime Rancher
★ Favorite Print Authors: Aiden Thomas, Andrew Joseph White, Shirahama Kamome
★ Favorite Animations: Madoka Magica, ENA, Frieren, The Owl House, Apothecary Diaries, Steven Universe
Hello! My name is Stevie Rodriguez (they/them). I am an award-winning game writer specializing in RPG and visual novel style games. I am particularly fond of crafting LGBTQ+ romance and fantasy stories, but am flexible towards other genres as well. Over the past few years, I've worked as a freelance game writer on narrative mobile games. I am currently looking to get more involved in the indie games space.I'm constantly striving to improve my narrative skills through new projects. At the moment, I am developing a personal project to submit to The Power of Pride Bundle.I am an alumni of Susan O'Connor's Game Writing Masterclass, the IGDA Foundation's Virtual Exchange program, the Indie Game Academy, the Different Games GDC Ambassador program, and the Art and Design: Games and Playable Media B.A. program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. During my time at university, I served as one of the writing officers of the Game Design and Art Collaboration club on campus as well.I take pride in crafting immersive stories exploring the complexity of human relationships, with an emphasis on the power of friendship and love. I'm also committed to featuring diverse characters in my work in a way that feels authentic, as well as uplifting my fellow marginalized devs. Overall, I strive to craft interactive stories that make a difference in the player's life. Whether it's a huge impact or just bringing a bit of joy to their day, I love to create games that inspire people!
Turnstyle
Writer, Character Concept Artist, Background Artist
Turnstyle is an urban fantasy turn-based RPG developed for the senior capstone series at UC Santa Cruz. Make your way through the subway and fend off strange monsters as you follow the conflicts between this tense group of roommates!
My contributions to Turnstyle include:• Wrote four in-game cutscenes, including dialog for all five characters
• Worked with a team of twelve collaborators to write, edit, and organize narrative documents, including character sheets, scripts, and a plot outline
• Designed three rounds of concept art for two of the main characters (Jade and Koralie)
• Illustrated two variations of the background art for the opening cutscene
• Put together moodboards for environments and characters
• Kept track of and updated the art and narrative tasks on our production plan, as well as set up department meetings for those specialities
Take a Ride on the Subway
I worked on Turnstyle as the lead writer and an artist. I aimed to create a narrative with diverse characters, focusing on their queer identities and complex relationships with each other.While the basic battle mechanics were decided early on, I was given a lot of freedom to determine what the story of Turnstyle would become. We decided as a team to surround the story around the cast's conflicts, both with each other and their inner struggles.
For the class, I decided to write a chapter focused on the character Amery. This chapter also introduces the world and other main characters. A major struggle I faced was attempting to give all the narrative aspects enough screentime, while also being able to finish Amery's character arc in four cutscenes. Overall, I feel that it went well and that this project has been a valuable experience in learning how to achieve a good story balance.
I'm really proud of how the story developed throughout the senior capstone course! I definitely would love to work on more RPGs with a diverse cast of queer characters in the near future. If you'd like to see the scripts and other documents I wrote for the game, please feel free to check out the link below!
What Lurks in Dark Corners (2025)
Narrative Designer, Script WriterWhat Lurks in Dark Corners is a visual novel project, which my team originally developed for The Game Writing SIG ArcJam. Enter a dark forest where family ties are tested and old wounds are made manifest.
Internship Projects (2025)
Narrative Design InternFiat Amor ~ Young Lady's Magical Academy and For the Honor of my Princess are two stories developed as part of my internship at EarReality. These interactive audio stories utilize game-like mechanics to immerse the listener into the lesbian romance narratives.
Our Vampire's Den (2024)
Game Creator, WriterOur Vampire's Den is a visual novel style vampire romance game, featured on the mobile app Dorian: Interactive Dramas Hub. Form close bonds with four alluring vampires in order to solve the mystery of why they have captured you in their vampire's den. Gain clues to escape...or fall in love trying.
To Free and Love Myself (2023)
Narrative Designer, Script WriterTo Free and Love Myself is a Twine game following the nonbinary lovers Miguel and Harper, who are embarking on a journey to kill an evil monster plaguing their land. Will Miguel succeed in their quest to slay the beast?
Turnstyle (2022)
Writer, Character Concept Artist, Background ArtistTurnstyle is a turn-based RPG where you balance five party members on a rotating pentagon. Navigate a public transit system infested with monsters, budgeting the party's cash and their patience with each other as you make your way around the city.
What Lurks in Dark Corners
Narrative Designer, Script Writer
What Lurks in Dark Corners is an interactive fiction / visual novel style game made in ArcWeave. I made the game, along with my team, for the Game Writing SIG Arcjam. The project was selected for the jam awards shortlist, ranking #15 out of 120 entries for Storytelling.You play as Myra, whose husband has recently passed. His mother, striken by grief, has fled to bargain with the creatures in the woods. Notcing that your children are acting amiss since her disappearance, you set off to confront your mother-in-law and pick up the broken pieces of your family along the journey.(Note: If music persists between pages, it can be muted by clicking the speaker button in the top right corner of the game window.)
My contributions to What Lurks in Dark Corners include:• Collaborated on character profiles detailing background, personality, and speaking style
• Aided in brainstorming and refining ideas into the final game concept
• Wrote dialogue with clear goals in mind, such as communicating character relationships and editing initial ideas to be within the jam scope
• Organized team meetings for brainstorming and story edits post-jam, as well as provided regular updates on writing progress throughout the jam
Overall, it was great to get more experience working on a jam team. I'm happy to be part of the jam shortlist and hope to get involved in more writing-focused jams in the future. If you'd like to see examples of my contributions to the project, please feel free to read through the document below!
Our Vampire's Den
Game Creator, Writer – Dorian: Interactive Dramas Hub
Our Vampire's Den is a vampire romance visual novel style game, featured on the mobile app "Dorian: Interactive Dramas Hub". The initial draft of Our Vampire's Den was selected as one of the winning pitches for the Dorian Legends Creator Fund. You play as a young adult vampire hunter, hailing from a long lineage of legendary vampire hunters. You go out on the hunt, expecting an easy job as usual, but find yourself trapped in the clutches of your biggest enemies yet.Form close bonds with four alluring vampires in order to solve the mystery of why they have captured you in their vampire's den. Gain clues to escape...or fall in love trying.If you'd like to play through the first episode, please use the emulator embed below! (If for any reason the embed is not working, or you'd like to read with a larger resolution, click here!)
My contributions to Our Vampire's Den include:• Received $1000 towards successful story pitch, and met deadlines as outlined by the Dorian Legends Creator Fund rules — delivering 1 episode per week (4,000-6,000 words), as well as supplementary writing (episode summaries, promotional material, etc.)
• Exceeded expectations for story performance benchmarks, earning a 46.5% player completion rate for my "pilot episodes"(episodes 1-3), with the average/target rate of episode completion on the Dorian app sitting at 30%
• Collected and applied research on vampire stories, romance tropes, and popular trends on Dorian app
• Organized dialogue and action lines using spreadsheets, as well as learned how to use the Dorian text importer tool to implement my story in-engine
• Collaborated with editors and artists to improve initial story drafts, as well as performance outcomes for paid player choices
• Created moodboards for characters, as well as provided reference images for the story covers
Enter the Vampire's Den
In preparation for the Dorian Legends pitch contest, I played through similar titles on the Dorian app (Crimson Bonds, SlashFic, etc.) in order to get an idea of what Dorian readers find engaging in their favorite stories. From this, I created rough concepts for my story and characters. I then put together my pitch carefully, balancing worldbuilding, characterization of the MC and four love interests, and emotional stakes all within just 1000 words. This work all ended up paying off, as I ended up being one of the winners, earning $500 towards my initial pitch! Over the next few weeks, I worked hard to deliver weekly episodes, prepare moodboards and character briefs for my collaborating artist, learn further about Dorian creator best practices, and more.While not a requirement of the Dorian Legends program, I also took on the challenge of using the Dorian Text Importer tool. Although Dorian creators have the option to manually write content in each node (similar to tools like Twine), the Text Importer tool allowed me to format my story episodes in a spreadsheet and directly import my writing into the game engine. While I have worked with writing in similar spreadsheets before, this was my first time implementing narrative content into a game by myself. This ended up going very well, in fact I enjoyed writing directly in the spreadsheets! It also helped make my workflow faster, being able to instantly import my writing into the engine and test for bugs seamlessly. I am grateful for the opportunity to get more experience writing in spreadsheets, and hope to experiment more with implementing my own writing in-engine for future projects.
Character moodboards, beta designs, and final designs for the love interest characters (Kalissa, Emerson, The Queen, and Dagney)
View of the node graph on the Dorian story editor page
Snippet from the episode 1 story spreadsheet
Overall, Our Vampire's Den ended up performing well during the duration of the Dorian Legends Creator program, earning an additional $500 towards the game! As shown from the Performance Review Image, the pilot episodes exceeded expectations for reader retention.Furthermore, Dorian readers left many kind and supportive comments on the Our Vampire's Den page. Many expressed attraction towards their favorite love interests, interest in the dynamics between characters, as well as excitement to see how the story will develop further. It was great to become more involved with the Dorian app community through the Legends program and to see everyone's love for my story!
If you're interested in seeing more materials regarding Our Vampire's Den, feel free to check out the full spreadsheet for episode 1 and the character moodboards below. Download the Dorian app to play through the full story!
Writing Samples
A collection of samples demonstrating my narrative skillset, including how I structure a branching combat scene, how I write item descriptions, how I build layers into a NPC conversation to balance the amount of story delivered to players, and how I incorporate design ideas into a game's story.
Linear Narrative
The above link leads to a 10 minute play I wrote for my playwriting class at UC Santa Cruz (THEA 157). The story follows Alzina, a cocky witch working at a magic shop, and a shy vampire Veronica who is a regular patron of the store. Antics ensue when Victoria asks Alzina for a dark magic item outside of her usual order.
Bark Sheets
The above link leads to a sample of spreadsheets made for my Writing for Interactive Narrative class (ARTG 140) containing dialogue for a magical girl character named Violetta. I imagined this to be for a magical girl combat game, similar in gameplay to the mobile game Magia Record. These barks cover a variety of states in game, such as taking damage and performing special moves. In total, I wrote 109 barks for Violetta throughout the course of the class.
I am currently seeking narrative opportunities, whether freelance or long-term. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected], or through filling out the form below.Connect with me on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and itch.io to stay updated on my new releases! Don't hesitate to say hi, I'm always happy to meet new game dev friends :)