Writing samples

In narratives I particularly enjoy stories that tackle the absurd. Watching characters struggle with accepting the inevitable heat death of life as we know it, make futile attempts to control their life and perhaps find solace in others seems to be recurring themes in my stories. As a part of the Fairy Trade Coffee speculative fiction duo with Sandra Waller, I have written short stories, an audio drama spec script, comics, and hope to release more interactive fictions and games soon.

Narrative design samples

My 2022 Narrative Design Portfolio: Samples_PortfolioCLassheikki2022

 

Individual samples

Read online:

Play online:

  • High Noon at the Produce Market (2020) – a short interactive fiction set in a post-apocalyptical work, < 5 minutes long (~600 words). The story is in-browser and free, made in Twine: [High Noon at the Produce Market]
  • i didn’t make a game for this jam (2020) – an interactive non-fiction. Depending on choices, 2 – 10 minutes long (150 – 1000 words). The story is in-browser and free, made in Twine: [ i didn’t make a game for this jam]

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  • Grumpy Librarian (2020) – A kafkaesque visual novel game with hand-drawn character illustrations, my first solodev project (I also wrote a long forum post about the development process which you can read here). Playtime is approximately 20 minutes, download for free for PC or Mac, or play-in-browser (note: load times may be a little slow). Grumpy Librarian was made using Ren’Py:

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In progress projects:

Since not all projects I’ve worked on are released, samples of my writing and narrative design for the following are available upon request:

  • Resistance is Fertile (Puzzle / Postapocalyptic, in testing, releases late October 2020) – In this short and atmospheric single-level point-and-click puzzle repair game, you play as a little light switch repair robot that is resisting its programming to try to fix a greenhouse. Beware of the looming OverCR diagnostic system, surpass your purpose and figure out how to repair what is broken.
  • The Three First Dates (Interactive fiction/ Romance, 2020, release date to be announced – Looking for publishers!) An interactive fiction about friendship, trust, and the nervous flutters and magic of first dates. To be included in the SANA Interactive Stories app.
  • Comet Born (Interactive fiction / Scifi, TBA) Have you also had a breakup bad enough that you joined an exoplanet colonisation effort? An interactive fiction currently in testing about frustration, isolation and coping.
  • Minute Detective (Visual Novel / Mystery, in-development 2018 –>, release date to be announced) – a visual novel detective game in which you interrogate suspects to find inconsistencies in their stories. Made together with Tuure Saloheimo and Ina Dolk, at Aalto University.
  • Sails of Change (Adventure / Comedy, 2019)- a small 3D open-world adventure game in which you play as a sailor in the archipelago, battling locals to trade and explore the local waters. Made together with other students at Aalto University.
  • Mochabot Organic  (Hypercasual / Cozy, 2019) – you are the robot barista at a small café. Serve drinks, get good reviews and grow your organic coffee beans! Winner of a Finnish Game Jam Award 2019. Available for Android & PC on itch.io.

 

Academic publications:

  • Annakaisa Kultima, Christina Lassheikki, and Solip Park. 2020. Designing Games as Playable Concepts: Five Design Values for Tiny Embedded Educational Games. To be included in the DiGRA 2020 proceedings. (available on request on ResearchGate)
  • Annakaisa Kultima, Christina Lassheikki, and Solip Park. 2020. Playable (research) concepts workshop: translating your topics into tiny games. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Academic Mindtrek (AcademicMindtrek ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 165–167. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3377290.3377321
  • Christina Lassheikki, Iina Nokelainen, Yuanqi Shan, Maximus Kaos, Martti Raevaara, Heikka Valja, and Perttu Hämäläinen. 2018. Fair and Encouraging – Developing an Automatic Assessment System in Aalto Drawing. In Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts (CHI PLAY ’18 Extended Abstracts). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 337–344. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3270316.3270318

 

Tutorials & educational writing:

 

På svenska

  • Fiktion: Berättelser om kärnan del 1: Den Svedda Jorden
    Kapitel: Berättelsen om änglarna

    Ett kapitel ur ett ungdomsromanmanus jag skrev för NaNoWriMo 2013. Kontakta mig på classheikki (at) gmail.com för fullt manus.

 

Find out more about my writing on:

https://christinalassheikki.com/writing