Hey, I'm Chris,
I'm a Swedish game developer, award-winning writer, and interactive narrative fanatic.I am the CEO of Sudden Snail, a story-first indie game studio located in the small city of Skövde. My work mainly focuses on screenplays, narrative design, and interactive writing. I also handle a lot of VO direction, video editing, text editing, 3D modelling, illustrations, design, marketing, and programming.If you want to reach me, I'm always available at:[email protected]
Esoteric Ebb
Raft
Apsulov: End of Gods
Gori: Cuddly Carnage
D&D Homebrews
Student Projects
Between 2021-2022 I was hired by Redbeet Interactive to take on the task of restructuring, writing, and concluding the narrative of their game Raft.
This included creating over 600 lines of voice recorded dialog. Around half of these were for collectable story 'notes', and the other half for NPC encountered towards the end of the game.
While Raft is a game set in a ruined world, the writing leaned more towards an optimistic outlook. Mostly through the eyes of eccentric but fun characters. While many of the characters were already established when I started on the project, I was given free reigns to change them to fit this new more focused scope of the narrative. I ended up cutting more than half of the named characters existing in the story, in favor of giving more screen-time and development to the fan-favorites.The following are three of the manuscripts produced during the project. They contain a short descriptor of each note's scenario and line, which along with the unique structure of these screenplays was requested by the developers.
During the ending of the game the players encounter the bad guy of the story, called Olof Wilkstrom. This is the manuscript detailing the series of encounters the players have with him on the final story island.
I've worked on Gori: Cuddly Carnage since early 2020, as the game currently in development by Angry Demon Studio in Skövde, Sweden. I've been mainly working as a content producer on the project, writing a multitude of dialogues, barks, and full cinematics. But unlike our previous collaboration, I've also gotten the chance to work on high concepts for level design, and craft the character arcs from the ground up. Both for the level to level overarching narrative, and for the episodic adventure each level contains.Gori is co-written with John Kalderon.
A group of dysfunctional abandoned toys fight an army of mutant toys in a neon-lit post-post-cyberpunk dystopia. You play as a cool cat, riding on a slicing-obsessed hoverboard, together with a permanently dejected A.I. in this gory and hilarious action-adventure.Here is the intro cinematic, written around the start of 2020.
The writing for Gori was from the get go all about crudeness and style. The juxtaposition of cute toys presented as foul-mouthed mutants made for a fun challenge. Especially for the three main characters, who each exhibit their own unique madness.The following example is the script for the intro cinematic.
I worked on Apsulov: End of Gods from June 2018 until release in August 2019. The tagline 'future viking horror' was used to pitch the project to me, and it immediately set the tone for my writing. The game is all about bleak science fiction with apocalyptic consequences, mixed with dark themes of Norse myth.Apsulov: End of Gods is co-written with John Kalderon.
My work on the game consists of a large amount of dialogues, as I had a hand in most interactions in the game. I also wrote several audio logs found by the player, detailing background information on important characters and adding depth to the setting. Beyond this I also assisted in the structuring of the narrative, rewrites, and some marketing material.
Working for Angry Demon Studio was a blast, and while I at first primarily produced content, I ended up helping out in restructuring parts of the narrative. This, alongside planning important events and handling character development was an amazing experience as well.
A mixture of myth and science fiction, the world of Apsulov turns to chaos during the playthrough. This example is an excerpt of an interaction between the player character and the eccentric mogul Henrik Andersson. The world falls apart around them as they discuss how it all went to hell.
Throughout Apsulov the player can discover audio logs from previous inhabitants of the facility. This example shows four logs from the perspective of a skeptical scientist. This was written to show the opinions of those not taken by the 'Voice in the Machine', and how they reacted to the ensuing chaos.
Over the years I've created content for the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Below are three examples of different types of homebrews, each playtested and iterated during the course of my various campaigns.
The Demonic Soul subclass was created to fill a mechanical hole between a Pact of the Chain Warlock and a Beast Master Ranger. Narratively it gives the player the opportunity to roleplay as a willing or unwilling contender for a throne in the Chaotic Abyss.
Any D&D campaign is incomplete without magic items. This is a collection of homebrew magic items I've created during the course of many campaigns.
Any D&D campaign is incomplete without magic items. This is a collection of homebrew magic items I've created during the course of many campaigns.
Askan is one of my more fleshed out homebrew settings. It's a mixture of weird fantasy, à la Planescape, and 20th century political conflicts.The ability to do both seamlessly in the same setting allows the players to go from dungeon crawling to philosophical debates at the DM:s behest. I also used this setting for my hobby project EBB.
Here are some short stories I've written over the years.
The Emperor Protects was written for a work test in early 2021.
Block My Way is a puzzle-platformer I worked on at a startup in 2018. I created the initial concept and worked as lead designer and programmer on the project. After the project ended after two months of work, I ended up with the source code and assets. In 2020 I decided to finish it up by myself and release it as a fun side project.
ESOTERIC EBB is an isometric CRPG I've been working on as a side project since 2018. Inspired by games like Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium, EBB is all about social exploration, magical encounters, and personal revelations. It started as an excuse for me to do what I enjoy most in game development: writing interactive and dynamic dialogs.
Over the course of development, I've expanded my skillset with 3D modelling, animation, etc, as everything in the demo seen in the trailer was made by me. It's been a fun journey!
Based on the 5e Open Game License, EBB is a CRPG about bringing the weird and fun from a tabletop experience into digital form. The prototype has a lot of dialogs. It uses a modified version of the open source Ink Script, allowing for tagging, dynamic line and choices, as well as direct interaction with the game's dice roll system.Untagged lines are displayed as player text. All other lines are followed by hashtags highlighted in orange. These show who is speaking, and what checks need to be made in order for the line to be displayed. The hashtags can also be used to directly control the story variables that affect events both within and outside the dialog in question.
I post updates to the development of this personal project on my twitter. I also have a steam page, check it out!
Go away, this is where I keep the trash.
After finishing my Masters in 2018, I worked as a freelancer 'narrative design fixer' for local studios in Skövde until I ended up with a project of my own, called Esoteric Ebb.I'm a programmer, designer, and writer. I primarily work in Unity and with interactive writing tools like Ink and Articy.
My name is Christoffer Bodegård, I'm located in Skövde, Sweden. I've worked as a freelancing game writer and developer since I finished my studies in 2018. I've worked in cinematic horror, survival games, and many smaller unique titles. Often with a focus on comedy or crafting compelling and memorable characters.I also have extensive experience in Unity as a coder and designer. I personally enjoy writing with articy:draft and ink, and I have a keen interest in history and myth, something that's reflected a lot in my work.
EBB is an isometric CRPG I've been working on as a side project since 2019. Inspired by games like Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium, EBB is all about social exploration, magical encounters, and personal revelations. It started as an excuse for me to do what I enjoy most in game development: writing interactive and dynamic dialogs.
Based on the 5e Open Game License, EBB is a CRPG about bringing the weird and fun from a tabletop experience into digital form. The prototype has a lot of dialogs. It uses a modified version of the open source Ink Script, allowing for tagging, dynamic line and choices, as well as direct interaction with the game's dice roll system.Untagged lines are displayed as player text. All other lines are followed by hashtags highlighted in orange. These show who is speaking, and what checks need to be made in order for the line to be displayed. The hashtags can also be used to directly control the story variables that affect events both within and outside the dialog in question.
I pitched Adal's Vikings during the first year of my studies at the University of Skövde, back in 2015. The pitch worked out, and I ended up working on a demo together with a large student team. It was both the first team I worked with developing games, and also the first time I took on the role as creative director. I ended up writing over ten thousand lines of dialog for the game during the ten week project, and afterwards we took home a Sweden Game Award for best Execution in Writing.
Malware is a proof of concept prototype. It was an attempt to create the basic shape and controls of a text-adventure game contextualized with a hacker-thriller plotline and over the top hacking scenes featuring block puzzles and strategic movement. While a one-day project can only create so much, the potential for interactive 'chat room' dialogs, and the possibilities for puzzle design makes me want to revisit the concept in the future.
TRY is a shader test. I put it together to both implement basic First Person Shooter movement mechanics and see how that perspective would work with this minimalistic mobius-like style.
MAX LEAP is a mobile arcade game all about making a ball bounce upwards. It was made for a short course during my advanced studies and was used to gather data about minimalistic user experiences and phone games. It's a pretty fun time waster, despite its bare-bones nature. Maybe I'll come back and redo the art some day to put it on the play store for kicks.