LUDONARRACON 2025 SPEAKERS

LudoNarraCon 2025 will feature 15 hours of in-depth talks with notable media and game creators on topics related to narrative games. Check out our stellar speakers and discussion topics for LudoNarraCon 2025 below! An overview of games that our speakers have previously worked on can be found here!

FIRESIDE CHATS

Lucy James

Lucy James is Lead Producer at GameSpot and Giant Bomb and co-host of the Friends Per Second podcast. She has been in games media for an decade and has been playing and loving video games for much longer than that.

Sam Lake

Sam Lake is a respected writer and director in the video game industry. He’s been a key creative force in dreaming up Remedy’s acclaimed games, stories and characters, Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control. He also portrayed the original Max Payne. Known for deep, layered storytelling, Lake co-directed and wrote Alan Wake 2, which won 200+ awards, including Game Direction and Narrative at The Game Awards. A BAFTA nominee, Lake was named to the Variety500 in 2023–2024 and received the Develop: Star for Best Creative Lead, Gamesbeat Visionary, Andrew Yoon Legend, and GDC Lifetime Achievement awards.

Telling Stories at the End of Everything

What drives us to write, play, and discuss fiction about the end of the world when our actual future feels so tenuous? Remy Siu and Pinki Li (1000xResist) join Chris Plante (The Besties) for a long and lovely conversation about stories of quick and horrific obliteration. [Please read the following like the voice-over for a 1950's drive-in movie.] "Tune in before it's... too late!"

Remy Siu

He has held other various positions, such as Curator-in-Residence at Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong and Composers-in-Residence with the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Canada). In 2024, his work on 1000xRESIST was nominated for three Independent Game Festival (IGF) Awards: Excellence In Narrative, the Nuovo Award, and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

Pinki Li

Pinki Li is an independent choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and writer working on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples. Her practice squats at the intersections of food, feminisms, race, voice, and body.

Pinki is the Co-Artistic Director of company Hong Kong Exile that explores the historical and contemporary politic of the Chinese diaspora. Pinki is a late sleeper, a late riser, a late bloomer, a latecomer, and a late-night snacker. She publishes under a pseudonym and is currently writing for indie video game company sunset visitor 斜陽過客.

Chris Plante

Chris Plante is the co-host of The Besties and The Resties. He co-founded Polygon in 2012 as its editor-at-large. He previously served as Culture Editor at The Verge. Chris’ writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vulture, and Vox.com.

A Fireside Chat with Wanderstop’s Davey Wreden

Remap’s Patrick Klepek spends an hour chatting with one of gaming’s most interesting designers, Davey Wreden, to chat through a journey from The Stanley Parable to The Beginner’s Guide and, finally, Wanderstop.

Patrick Klepek

Patrick Klepek has been reporting about video games for more than 20 years. These days, he’s a founding editor at Remap, a publication and podcast from the creators of Waypoint, and runs a popular parenting and gaming newsletter called Crossplay.

Davey Wreden

Davey is an independent game developer who's worked on such titles as The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide, and Wanderstop. He wrote and directed Wanderstop along with the team at Ivy Road. He lives in Vancouver, BC.

PANELS

This panel will be 3 game writers who make very relatable characters and stories, whole also leaning on various comedy tropes to make the players regularly laugh out loud, which is one of the most difficult elements of game/narrative design. We will outline writing tips, including how to format for delivering punch lines, level design tips for creating running gags/long term jokes, and more. This panel will pull from real world games that are out, as well as general comedy writing as learned from experienced comedy tv and movie writers.

Shawn Alexander Allen

Shawn Alexander Allen, co-founder of NuChallenger, is a hip-hop obsessed visual artist, game designer, writer, project leader pushing the culture of games to be better. With over 20 years of experience in making & marketing games, from large scale AAA behemoths selling tens of millions of copies to tiny award winning game jam games, and everything in between.

Xalavier Nelson Jr.

Xalavier Nelson Jr. is a BAFTA-nominated studio head, narrative director, and writer, with dozens of titles under his belt including Stranger Things VR, Magic: The Gathering, Hypnospace Outlaw, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, and El Paso, Elsewhere. He also makes strides in a storytelling career outside of games, with releases such as the cult hit comic Sherlock Holmes Hunts the Moth Man.

Adanna Nedd

Adanna Nedd is a Games Writer, Narrative Designer, and Games Researcher. She has previously written on Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To and Kiss U, and when she isn't writing she loves baking and watching TV with her cat August.

A conversation between Patrick Klepek (Remap) and the designers of two upcoming horror games about what it means to write and incorporate horror narratives into modern video game storytelling. Learn as Emily Pitcher (lily's world XD) and Chantal Ryan (darkwebSTREAMER) unpack their approach to horror in video games.

Chantal Ryan

"Director of We Have Always Lived In The Forest and creator+lead developer of darkwebSTREAMER, Chantal is a horror nerd to her core. She holds a BA (Advanced) in Anthropology & English and wrote her English thesis on creepypastas.

She founded the Women Leaders In Games network and is a regular speaker at industry events, rambling about topics like semiotic design, empathetic meaning-making in games and the critical role of game design and game narrative in contemporary culture. When she's not making games, she's writing and working other things that make you feel... well, weird."

Emily Pitcher

Emily Pitcher (SonderingEmily) is a Los Angeles based game developer and content creator, making videos about her favorite indie games and her journey of making her first horror game. She's developing lily's world XD, a psychological horror game about investigating a young girl's computer. Channel your inner 2000s teen as you read her old conversations, customize her blog, and look through her embarrassing selfies. That is, until you find messages addressed to you. Emily has been featured in Forbes 30 under 30 Games, The Game Awards Future Class, Polygon, Business Insider, and Entrepreneur.

Patrick Klepek

CobySoft Joe (Dome King Cabbage), Adam Pype (No Players Online), and Lucas Immanuel (The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time), discuss the logistical and narrative challenges of making games that are self-reflexively about games. In it they talk about where to draw the line between fiction and reality, the dissonance of interacting with a world supposedly designed for a different purpose, how emulating (or not emulating) other games breeds creativity, and how exploring video games through video games allows for unique storytelling possibilities.

Cobysoft Joe

Cobysoft Joe is a multi-disciplinary artist developing a visual novel set in a monster-collecting RPG known as Dome-King Cabbage. Originally made for a game jam, Dome-King Cabbage was a small project that Joe would solo-develop after school while he taught English in Osaka. It has since spiralled into a genre-bending, medium defying work— incorporating warbled beats, psychedelic 3D visuals, and rich prose.

Lucas Immanuel

Lucas is a writer, artist, and game developer from northern California. He created The Remake of the End of The Greatest RPG of All Time, a puzzle game set in the last hour of the remake of a lost 90s JRPG that doesn't exist, Deitrus, an hour long action RPG, worked as an Intern pixel artist on Please VR, and has released more than 20 games so far. He loves to make things that play with genre and defy expectations.

Adam Pype

Adam Pype is a belgian game developer making experimental horror games. he's mostly known for the 2019 freeware horror game No Players Online, as well as several other works like MapFriend, Coldline and Spookware which he made as part of a commitment to make a game every month. he's now shifted into expanding some into commercial titles together with long-time collaborator-sound designer Viktor Kraus and Tibau van den Broeck, starting with SPOOKWARE in 2021 and most recently No Players Online. the former is a wario-ware-like RPG featuring about a hundred microgames, and the latter features a central mechanic where you download games from the internet and then combine them together with a supernatural soul-transfering application.

Trust is a delicate thing. As narrative developers we are always in conversation not just with the player's imagination, but with their attention, and subconscious understanding of the world. In the right hands, a good story feels exhilarating, but as we tell more complex stories in more and more sprawling games, it's easy to get lost or to overwhelm players with exposition and scale. We'll use examples to explore how writers and creators can build worlds that are comprehensible and wondrous, fantastic yet accessible, and how the players' imagination and belief can be tools for creation. Our panel features developers from diverse backgrounds who have worked with narrative innovators in the industry like Deck Nine, Insomniac, and Remedy.

Camerin Wild

Camerin Wild is a Black, non-binary writer and inclusion consultant at Sweet Baby Inc. Currently, they're busy working on Usual June in collaboration with Finji, and their past work includes God of War Ragnarok, Alan Wake 2, and an as yet unannounced project from Remedy. In their spare time, they make art, cuddle their dog, and dream of revolution.

Maxine Sophia Wolff

Maxine Sophia Wolff is a writer and narrative designer with a background in fiction and literature. She is actively involved in the Science Fiction + Fantasy fiction scene in addition to her work in the video games industry. She routinely self-publishes interactive works on itch.io, and has worked with dozens of different studios on dozens of different games. Although a lover of all genres, horror and sci-fi are her bread and butter.

Pelo Brisson-Tsavoussis

Pelo grew up in the Bahamas until he was 17 and moved to Montreal for University. He had other plans, however, and dropped out after two years of Software Engineering to go to culinary school. After 15 years in the kitchen (8 as an executive chef), COVID-19 brought an opportunity for him to branch out into Game Dev. An opportunity at Sweet Baby Inc was what he needed to uncover his love of simple, fun, and empathetic story-telling and narrative design, and 4 years in he couldn't imagine doing anything else.

James Wright

Writer, reader, ramen eater. One-time Eisner Award nominee, two-time contributor to Eisner Award winning anthologies. Amateur knitter, but getting better. Please ask me about Sekiro or Monkey Island.

How do video games help us uncover our personal identities and the exploration of the self? In this panel we discuss “Unbound-likes”, a rising genre of narrative games inspired by Toge Productions and Mojiken Studios global hit game, “A Space For The Unbound”. These are games that utilise themes of memories, home, a sense of belonging and the surreal to embark players on deeply personal journeys. This panel will be hosted by Sam (20m Podcast) alongside Rhea (Fishbowl), Juan (Last Time I Saw You) and Scott (Opus series). Each panelist will discuss how memories, culture and the surreal intersect as the foundation of these stories. We will also dive into how the making of these games create impact for both players and the developers creating them.

Samantha Low

Samantha Low is a Tokyo-based writer, PR and marketing consultant for indie games. She currently has a monthly video games column in The Japan Times, a weekly entertainment column for Tokyo Weekender and is a frequent contributor to GamesHub. As a podcaster, she also co-created the "Malaysia Direct" , the first digital showcase of its kind to feature Malaysian games. She was a speaker at gamescom asia 2023 and delivered the opening keynote at gamescom asia 2024. She was inducted into The Game Awards Future Class 2023 for her work championing Southeast Asian and Japanese games at a global level.

Juan Fandiño Martín

Born and raised in Spain, Juan Fandiño spent the last 10 years in Japan, where he worked as a photographer and video game developer, being Yume Nikki Dream Diary his first work as art director. In 2020 he formed the studio Maboroshi Artworks and recently released his first game Last Time I Saw You.

Rhea Gupte

Rhea Gupte is a storycrafter, worldbuilder and co-founder at imissmyfriends.studio, a two person, indie game studio where she writes, designs and directs. The first title from the studio, Fishbowl, is currently in development. Fishbowl won the SXSW x WINGS award at SXSW Sydney in 2024 and won Upcoming Game of the Year runner's up at India Game Developers Conference in 2023. Rhea is also a multi-disciplinary artist whose body of work spans across art, photography, graphic design, creative direction and writing. Thought provoking, her work has been exhibited across the world and is often featured in major publications talking about sustainability and social change.

Scott Chen

Co-founder of SIGONO. Scott has worked on multiple million-download games like Hyper Square and the OPUS series including OPUS: The Day We Found Earth and OPUS: Rocket of Whispers, OPUS: Echo of Starsong. Currently he is working on OPUS: Prism Peak.

We all love stories in our games, but the way stories engage us changes quite a lot between titles, genres and even mediums. What works well in a PC game may have to be rethought for mobile or might need to be even more radically different for VR or AR. What about the different stories told in a game that uses only a mouse for input versus a complex strategy game that requires all the keys on a keyboard? Our panelists come from a range of games told in all different media, from Watchdogs: Legion to Homeworld: Vast Reaches to Among Us VR to to As Dusk Falls, and they all know something about the shifting ways stories are told across genre and medium. In this spirited discussion we’ll cover why game stories are all so incredibly different, while also diving into what unifies the best game narratives.

Richard Rouse III

Richard Rouse III is a creative director, designer, and writer who has worked on a range of titles from AAA to indie and everything in between. He is the Studio Creative Director at FarBridge currently working on dark new games. Past projects include Homeworld: Vast Reaches, The Suffering, State of Decay, Quantum Break, Drakan: The Ancients' Gates, Damage Incorporated, Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis and his experimental stealth/narrative game The Church in the Darkness. Previously he was a Design Director/Lead at Microsoft Studios, Ubisoft Montreal, Midway and Surreal Software. Rouse wrote the popular book Game Design: Theory & Practice and is a frequent speaker on game design and interactive storytelling at conferences and universities.

Deborah Hendersen

Deborah is a Senior Design Researcher and Studio Design Lead for Microsoft Global Publishing. She has worked on games as varied as Interior/Night’s As Dusk Falls, Dontnod’s Tell Me Why, Undead Labs' State of Decay (1 & 2), Double Fine’s Happy Action Theater, and Remedy’s Quantum Break. She is interested in the development of new methods, particularly mixed methods, and has lectured extensively on how to test narrative (both narrative usability, but also dial-testing for passive content). She earned a PhD in Cognitive Psychology at Stanford, where her research included questions such as: Does it matter if the book you are reading is fiction or nonfiction? (Yes.) Why don’t adults have imaginary friends? (Never mind, they do.) And, why are kids afraid of monsters under the bed, even when they know they are imaginary? (A lack of inhibitory control.)

Jesse Schell

Jesse Schell is the CEO of Schell Games, a team of one hundred people who strive to make truly great games, both for the purposes of entertainment and education. These include award-winning VR games such as Among US VR, I Expect You To Die, HoloLAB Champions, and Star Wars: Droid Repair Bay. Jesse serves as Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University, and is the author of the award-winning book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.

How to make an old school narrative driven game appeal to a modern audience

In this panel, Julia Minamata (The Crimson Diamond), Adam Vian (Crow Country) and Yann Morgan (Inspector Waffles: Early Days) will talk about how they went about making their old school games, who they were inspired by, what pitfalls they avoided when making their games and how they publicised and marketed their games to a modern audience.

Yann Morgan

Yann Morgan aka Goloso Games, is a solo developer who has been making games for over 5 years. In 2019 he released his first game Antenna Dilemma and then in 2021 he released detective game Inspector Waffles. On 15th November 2024 he released Inspector Waffles: Early Days, a top-down detective adventure with point-and-click mechanics, inspired by classic Game Boy games.

Adam Vian

Adam Vian is the creator of the Long Lost Lempi comics and the artist for SFB Games. Together with his brother Tom Vian he made Haunt the House, Detective Grimoire, Tangled Tower and he also contributed on Paradise Killer. On 9th May 2024 he released Crow Country, an old school survival horror game inspired by Silent Hill and Resident Evil to rave reviews. His game was also voted best PS5 game released in May this year.

Julia Minamata

Julia is a Toronto-based game dev and artist. She made art for Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, Witch Strandings, and Recommendation Dog!! (which she also art directed). On 15th August 2024 she released her first game, The Crimson Diamond, a retro-inspired, EGA text parser mystery adventure.

Seoirse Dunbar

Seoirse started the Adventure Games Podcast in 2019 and since then has interviewed numerous adventure game developers of both classic and modern adventure and narrative games such as Ken and Roberta Williams, Al Lowe, Charles Cecil, Dave Gilbert and much more. He has also hosted 2 panels at AdventureX and he has interviewed Tony Warriner and Charles Cecil at Reboot Develop Blue. Seoirse and his team have also reviewed more than 200 adventure games since the podcast started and the adventure Games Podcast was nominated for Best Podcast at the People's Choice Podcast awards for 2023 and 2024.

Some of the best moments in interactive fiction come from truly understanding someone with a rough exterior and glimpsing your shared humanity. Join writers from 1000xResist, Perfect Tides, Scarlet Hollow and Slay the Princess as they talk about their methods for writing their most standoffish yet ultimately human characters.

Tony Howard-Arias

Tony Howard-Arias co-founded Black Tabby Games with his wife Abby. He currently works as a writer and game designer on Scarlet Hollow and Slay the Princess and manages the day to day of the studio. He and Abby live in Toronto with their cat Spoons, their axolotl Nubs, and their snake Wednesday.

Meredith Gran

Meredith Gran is a game developer, cartoonist and animator living in Philadelphia. She is the creator of Perfect Tides, a point and click exploration of teen life in the year 2000. She is currently working on the sequel, Perfect Tides: Station to Station, due out in 2025.Her previous work includes the webcomic series Octopus Pie, which amassed an audience of over 100,000 readers during its 10-year run.

Remy Siu

Remy Siu 蕭逸南 is a new media artist and game developer based in Vancouver, BC. In 2021, he founded sunset visitor 斜陽過客, an independent video game studio focused on narrative experiences. He is also currently the Co-Artistic Director of Hong Kong Exile. He has held other various positions, such as Curator-in-Residence at Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong and Composers-in-Residence with the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Canada). In 2024, his work on 1000xRESIST was nominated for three Independent Game Festival (IGF) Awards: Excellence In Narrative, the Nuovo Award, and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.