Text Express: Word Adventure is a narrative-driven, live service puzzle game by Story Giant Games.
Joining Story Giant Games as lead writer on Text Express: Word Adventure meant catching up fast. The world, the cast and the tone were already set, with a playerbase well invested in them. Beyond getting up to speed, my job was to carry the main story forward.
Working with the Creative Director, I helped shape the overarching story plots for upcoming chapters. Each new arc had to stay true to the game's steampunk/fantasy world and follow on from earlier chapters, while keeping Tilly's story moving forward.
My main focus was the ongoing plot: continuing Tilly's journey across the world by train as she searches for her parents. I wrote these chapters to fit the existing story while raising the stakes and steering players toward the final act.
I also wrote standalone side stories that brought back familiar characters and mixed in quirky new ones.
Read a scene from the game (PDF)
Text Express: Word Adventure won Best Puzzle Game at the 2022 Pocket Gamer Awards, and was nominated for Game of the Year at the same awards in 2023, during my time on the game. It has since passed 500,000 downloads on Google Play, with a rating of 4.6 there and 4.7 on the App Store.