Snowsgiving ❆ Choose Your Own Adventure Game 2022

Stakeholder: Discord (In-House)
Role: Illustrator, Writer, Code support

At the end of every year, Discord would focus its energy toward creating a memorable Snowsgiving event. Slotted to be the most ambitious Snowsgiving yet, the company planned to slowly release a bundle of themed events, merch, product features, user experiences, and more over the course of the season. The event would additionally serve as a fundraiser, with 2022's Snowsgiving raising $129,017 for the Crisis Text Line.

After Mariam and I expressed interest in creating a narrative game featuring Discord characters and building on the brand's character lore, Discord greenlit a short Choose Your Own Adventure game for a Snowsgiving reward. The final game would end up becoming a part of the package given to users to participated in every day of the free in-app 2022 Snowsgiving campaign.

All art, coding, and writing was done by Mariam and I under within a rush timeline. The game was released on the final day of Snowsgiving, available to both free and Nitro users. The final game was localized into 16 languages and has been archived by users on the Internet Archive, allowing the game to be played today!

The choice to create a Choose Your Own Adventure game was a natural outgrowth of Mariam and I's passion for visual novel games. With many users expressing interest in the Discord characters and the narrative built into Discord's brand, a short narrative game felt like a great opportunity to offer users a deeper level of connection with Discord's world.

During early stages of development, Mariam and I worked closely to develop concept art and a short proof-of-concept game which could be scaled to a full-length game after review. The final game featured a greately refined the scope, featuring a short story with multiple diverging pathways and interactive choices. The player was required to finish each route and complete simple story quests to unlock the ending.

I was responsible for creating visual elements, including character art, items, and stylized photo-collage backgrounds. We decided to pursue a retro video game aesthetic, utilizing a limited color palette and pixel sprites, to emphasize the cozy vibes of the Snowsgiving event. Mariam and I collaborated on writing, editing, localizing, and proofing the final games. The game was constructed Twine 2 using HTML, CSS, and limited javascript.