Bodfish
Designer · Developer · Composer
A narrative game adapted from a short story written by my father — built so it feels like playing a film.
From the script
Bakersfield had a way of doing that to people. It had a way of amplifying the tick-tock, stretching out the space between the seconds and adding color and sound to the black and white quiet machinations of the universe. It could lull a man to silence and leave him staring out into long wide open spaces, thinking he’d found paradise when all he’d found was an irrigated ditch in the middle of nowhere, that belonged to no one. From the short story by my father
Screenshots coming soon — the prologue is in active development
The story behind the story
Bodfish began as a short story written by my father. Adapting it into a game is a father-and-son collaboration: he wrote the world, and I'm building the way you move through it — the branching narrative, the mechanics, and the music.
The design pillar is simple and stubborn: it should feel like playing a film. There are no cutscenes. Every scene is expressed through a purpose-built mechanic — a quiet conversation becomes a driving game — so the player transitions fluidly between story moments and gameplay, and never stops playing the film.
At heart it's a choose-your-own-adventure: a branching story designed for a roughly three-hour full release. I'm de-risking it the way I'd de-risk any product — with a playable prologue proof of concept before committing to the full build.
How it's built
- Branching narrative design — a choose-your-own-adventure structure where choices ripple through the story.
- A mechanic per scene — each story beat gets its own bespoke gameplay, designed so interaction carries the storytelling.
- Rapid prototyping with Claude Code — testing scene mechanics in playable form before polishing them.
- Original score — I'm composing the music scene by scene, alongside the mechanics, so the two grow up together.
What's next
Currently building: the playable prologue — proving the no-cutscenes pillar scene by scene ahead of the full release.