Projects

Oster Journey (Game designer) is a story about a trader in the fantasy land of Oster. Lead your trading caravan through a high-fantasy journey: barter with merchants, meet with various artisans who you will help create masterpieces and uncover what a huge world has to offer. I was the narrative designer behind this project, writing the dialogue and worldbuilding.

Link to itch page

https://rotik-k.itch.io/oster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H65XobIsS-k 

Eisenburg 1918 (Solo project), The narrative followed a crew struggling with isolation, paranoia, and the growing realisation that they were fighting on the losing side of the war... Haunted by a nightmare of sinking and the enemy, the protagonist had to try their best not to lose their own mind.  During development, I ensured that each character had unique attributes and personalities, from physical appearance to speech patterns and dialects. To support the authenticity of the narrative, I conducted extensive research into the operation of First World War U-boats, including ensuring that the deployment days and procedures, maintenance routines, and the responsibilities of individual crew members were accurate.  This project was made in Ren'Py for the story aspect. For the 2D art, I made it all in Affinity Designer. 

Links to Itch page

https://matthewbain.itch.io/uboat-horror-game

Kings of Scotland (Solo project). The project is focused on retelling the story of the Scottish Kings during the early 11th century, an age of major change in Scotland and in the medieval world as a whole.  The narrative is presented through the form of a visual novel using 2D art and animations to flesh out the story. In developing the story, it will follow multiple sources and academic papers to ensure the dialogue and narrative are true to their period and achieve the aesthetic as authentically as possible. This is a narrative project that, through using Ren’Py, aimed to present the story of the Scottish kings from King Malcolm II to Malcolm III.

(Working on remastering the visual novel hopefully get a full release soon) 

Partners in slime (Game designer and narrative designer). In this 3D puzzle-solving game, the player controls a slime that must complete puzzles and tasks in order to retrieve a love letter from their partner. My role as the narrative designer involved writing most of the story, world-building, and dialogue, drawing inspiration from games like Stardew Valley and Paper Mario for the dialogue style. I implemented the dialogue into the script in-game using Unreal Engine. This game was awarded the runner-up prize during the EGX 2025 Dare Academy. 

Links to the Itch page

https://pxthella.itch.io/partners-in-slime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF5anBJ0XVQ

'Work in progress project' inspired by Studio Ghibli. I'm working on environments in Blender to further advance my skill set as a game designer and for storytelling.  The current plan is to remaster my Scottish Kings visual novel with more detailed scenes and character art.

Lion in flames. My other work-in-progress project is a story I've been developing early in concepts. Its main focus is the story of King James the 2nd of Scotland and his feud with the black douglas clan.   In this project, I aim to develop my 2D skills with the illustrations of the characters and to make scenes depicted in the story.