zakelro!

Alice’s Magical Mahjong

Zakelro — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:00:52 +0000

I’m excited to announce that Alice’s Magical Mahjong, a PoBros Inc. game I wrote dialog for, has been released on GameHouse and Real Arcade.

It’s a delightfully designing mahjong game that incorporates story elements from one of my favorite books, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It’s a lot of fun to play and the voice actors they hired to deliver the dialog are truly enchanting.

A 60 minute demo is available and the full version is available is available for $20.

Two Speaking Engagements

Corvus — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:46:33 +0000

This week I’ve been invited to speak to a couple of different groups on The Art of Self Promotion. Drawing upon my own experiences, I’ll be providing concrete steps you can take to improve your chances of finding the type of career you want in the industry of your choice.

Tuesday evening I’ll be following Jason Della Rocca, Executive Director of the IGDA, and Coray Seifert, Associate Producer at THQ’s Kaos Studios NYC, at the Philadelphia IGDA chapter meeting. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. on the first floor of Levine Hall on the University of Pennsylvania campus. The theme of this meeting is “Breaking into the Games Industry.”

Wednesday evening I’ll be speaking via conference call to the Westwood College Online Game Club.

Both talks will focus on ways you can promote yourself, highlight your skills, and tell a better story about who you are and what you can offer prospective employers, clients, and colleagues. Using Zakelro’s focus on Story, Play and Community, I’ll provide people with a few simple self-promotion tools they can use to successfully propel themselves into the career of their choice.

Lowing in the Fields

Zakelro — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:55:30 +0000

Zakelro is excited to announce that we’ve been selected by Moo to help them with their upcoming Egg Hunt! Late last week, Moo found themselves in need of a writer with an understanding of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and an ability to provide materials within a very short timeframe. They put out a call for help and in less than a day we were well on our way to a fun partnership. Corvus was able to quickly get up to speed on the egg-cellent egg-hiding work they’ve already done. After providing Moo with samples that day, it was decided that the clues would take the form of short poems–from Limericks to Haiku.

The Egg Hunt begins this Monday, March the 3rd, and runs through the 16th. Every day, the incomparable Denise will post several clues on the Moo blog. The first person to successfully interpret a clue and find the egg will win one of 4,000 prizes they’ll be giving away. The Egg Hunt takes place on their site, across the internet and in the ‘Great Outdoors.’ Full details about the Egg Hunt can be found in the official contest FAQ.

Moo is offering up some truly great prizes, ranging from discounts at partner site such as Ponoko and Etsy to free pro accounts at Flickr. So be sure (if you’re not family, of course) to stop by the Moo blog every day starting on Monday and test your wits against our cryptic rhymes!

Xfire Debate Club Appearance

Corvus — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:01:17 +0000

I’ve been invited to join the Xfire Debate Club on January 24th and 25th for two Independent Games events. On January 24th, I will join Chris Pasley, Geoff Benson, and Josiah Pisciotta for a community Q&A session. On January 25th, a ‘debate’ on the state of independent game development will take place and I will be joining host of talented people–including Amanda Fitch, developer of Aveyond and Grimm’s Hatchery, Chirs Pasley, Director of Games at Kongregate.com and Jay Barnson, developer of Void War and the upcoming Frayed Knights (Jay regularly posts entertaining updates on development of Fayed Knight on his blog, Tales of the Rampant Coyote).

The Xfire Debate Club is a regular event hosted by Xfire via their popular chat/social-network software.

Corvus Gets PoBros Contract!

Corvus — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:53:26 +0000

I was awarded a writing contract last week by PoBros. I’m writing the textual elements for an unannounced casual game for the PC. I submitted my writing samples in response to a Craig’s List posting and heard back from them within 24 hours requesting a proposal. Within the week I was contracted and drafting an outline for a Monday meeting.

It’s been terrific working with them and I’m very excited to be included on this particular project! They have really made me feel a part of the team. It’s nice to be on a project where the storyteller is encouraged to explore ways of tightly integrating textual narrative elements with the ludic narrative elements.

More updates on this project will be forthcoming!

The Launch of Zakelro Story Studio!

Corvus — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:03:02 +0000

Welcome to the zakelro site! This is the result of about two weeks of work that we sneaked in between our day jobs and other projects. Like all web sites it’s a work in progress, a living document if you will.

We have many exciting projects in the works and we’ll be adding content as we go, so please feel free to poke around, add our RSS feed to your favorite reader and check back often to watch us grow.