Space Heroes Universe was a free-to-play online virtual world for kids and families, set in a sprawling sci-fi galaxy where players created their own Space Hero and embarked on missions to rescue the Glows, mysterious creatures of light,stolen by the villainous Lord Shadowbot.
Developed by Bubble Gum Interactive and launched in 2011, the game grew to millions of players worldwide powered by a freemium model that let players explore, socialise, and customise their heroes and home bases.
I co-founderd Bubble Gum Interactive and played a central role in bringing Space Heroes Universe to life, leading product design, IP development, marketing, and community.
From shaping the game's identity and narrative universe to building and nurturing one of the most engaged kids' gaming communities in Australia, my fingerprints were on every layer of the experience.
What started as a virtual world quickly grew into a full entertainment property. The game expanded into mobile titles short-form animated cartoons, a trading card game, plush toys, stationery, and merchandise.
Space Heroes Universe was featured on ABC's Good Game: Spawn Point, received the Seal of Approval from FamilyFriendlyVideoGames.com, and was covered by The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, Cartoon Brew, and Animation World Network.
Space Heroes Universe remains one of the most joyful and ambitious projects of my career. Building a world that millions of kids genuinely loved, complete with its own mythology, characters, and community, was something truly special. The friendships forged, the late nights solving impossible problems, and the thrill of watching kids discover the galaxy we built together: I wouldn't trade any of it.
Developed by Bubble Gum Interactive and launched in 2011, the game grew to millions of players worldwide powered by a freemium model that let players explore, socialise, and customise their heroes and home bases.
I co-founderd Bubble Gum Interactive and played a central role in bringing Space Heroes Universe to life, leading product design, IP development, marketing, and community.
From shaping the game's identity and narrative universe to building and nurturing one of the most engaged kids' gaming communities in Australia, my fingerprints were on every layer of the experience.
What started as a virtual world quickly grew into a full entertainment property. The game expanded into mobile titles short-form animated cartoons, a trading card game, plush toys, stationery, and merchandise.
Space Heroes Universe was featured on ABC's Good Game: Spawn Point, received the Seal of Approval from FamilyFriendlyVideoGames.com, and was covered by The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, Cartoon Brew, and Animation World Network.
Space Heroes Universe remains one of the most joyful and ambitious projects of my career. Building a world that millions of kids genuinely loved, complete with its own mythology, characters, and community, was something truly special. The friendships forged, the late nights solving impossible problems, and the thrill of watching kids discover the galaxy we built together: I wouldn't trade any of it.
Shadowcast
Text Game · Chatbot · Conversational · 2017
Played by over 400,000 people
Long before AI chatbots became part of everyday life, conversational interfaces were a frontier that few had thought to turn into games.
In 2016, while leading the launch of conversational chatbots at Kik, I built Shadowcast, a text-based, choose-your-own-adventure experience delivered entirely through a chat interface, using the early conversational platform Massively.ai.
Shadowcast was not powered by AI. Instead, it was a carefully crafted branching narrative. A system of choices, consequences, and story paths that played out like a conversation. Players would respond to prompts, make decisions, and find themselves drawn deeper into an unfolding mystery, with the chat format creating an unusual intimacy and tension rarely found in traditional games.
The inspiration came from the text adventures I grew up with: Zork, Moria, and the broader tradition of simple games where language was both the controller and the canvas. I wanted to revisit that spirit but deliver it through something utterly contemporary: a chat window. The constraint of a conversational UI turned out to be a creative gift, forcing economy of language and precision of choice in a way that traditional game design doesn't always demand.
Building Shadowcast was an exercise in systems thinking as much as storytelling. Mapping out every branch, every dead end, every converging path. It was also an early exploration of what interactive narrative could look like in a world increasingly mediated by messaging apps and bots. In that sense it was ahead of its time, arriving just as the industry was beginning to ask those same questions seriously.
It remains one of the most purely writerly things I've made, A game that lives entirely in words and the spaces between choices.
It's still avaialble to play - try it online or visit Massively and play there.
In 2016, while leading the launch of conversational chatbots at Kik, I built Shadowcast, a text-based, choose-your-own-adventure experience delivered entirely through a chat interface, using the early conversational platform Massively.ai.
Shadowcast was not powered by AI. Instead, it was a carefully crafted branching narrative. A system of choices, consequences, and story paths that played out like a conversation. Players would respond to prompts, make decisions, and find themselves drawn deeper into an unfolding mystery, with the chat format creating an unusual intimacy and tension rarely found in traditional games.
The inspiration came from the text adventures I grew up with: Zork, Moria, and the broader tradition of simple games where language was both the controller and the canvas. I wanted to revisit that spirit but deliver it through something utterly contemporary: a chat window. The constraint of a conversational UI turned out to be a creative gift, forcing economy of language and precision of choice in a way that traditional game design doesn't always demand.
Building Shadowcast was an exercise in systems thinking as much as storytelling. Mapping out every branch, every dead end, every converging path. It was also an early exploration of what interactive narrative could look like in a world increasingly mediated by messaging apps and bots. In that sense it was ahead of its time, arriving just as the industry was beginning to ask those same questions seriously.
It remains one of the most purely writerly things I've made, A game that lives entirely in words and the spaces between choices.
It's still avaialble to play - try it online or visit Massively and play there.