Fairside Strategy is a decision-making strategy game that exposes kids to morally complex situations, or trolley problems. It's part of the larger product Fairside Stories that was created under my leadership as well (more here). Fairside Stories has three distinct game styles - combat, visual novel, and Fairside Strategy. It was reskinned 24 times to create multiple narrative episodes.

Set in the fictional world of Fairside, players face situations that range from deep to deranged but always delightful. The game has an overarching narrative, and players have to do what it takes to reach a specific goal.

Game Mechanics:

• Choice-based Narrative: Players are given situations with choice pairings. Each choice tags to different narrative, emotional, and mechanical outcomes

• Stat-based Goals: Choice raise or lower stats scores. To win, you have to hit certain thresholds

• Finite Time: A finite number of scenarios are drawn from the decision pool

• Trait Framework: The players choices reflect The Monk, The Knight, The Friend, and The Rogue, each loosely based on classic class archetypes (Monk, Paladin, Cleric, Rogue) but simplified to some core behaviors

As Head of Design, Game Director, Narrative Director, Creator, call it what you will, I led this game’s development from start to finish.

• Game Designer: The game started as a paper prototype in my house in May 2019. It got its first digital prototype (codenamed “Reignslike” - early writing was heavily inspired by Reigns) in December 2019. In March 2021 it went live on the Playstore as “10 Turn President” - because in that version you were President for 10 Turns. We got data and player feedback, took it down, refined it, and it formed the basic framework and goal of my company’s flagship product, Fairside Stories.

• Narrative Designer: I defined the game's tone and oversaw all its iterations over the years. The tone is always wry and a bit of an eye-roll - because that’s how I saw the world when I was 11, enthusiastically but so confident that I knew better than everyone else. I personally wrote a lot of the games early on, and later when inspired by the kids we co-designed with.

• World Designer: The world of Fairside and its IP were evolved under my direction (more here). The first version of it was stick-figured in 10 Turn President!

• Co-Designer with Players: One of the coolest parts of the development was a month-long immersive co-design experience with 550 kids in Dubai! The tone, the length of the game, and the themes got iterated on a lot over the years. These kids and their ideas directly influenced game scenarios, including the creation of a game about a cyborg janitor trying to take over the school!

It’s funny, but this is the game I’ve worked the longest on in my career, it’s the bedrock of the company I co-founded, and it’s so simple. I’m extremely proud of it. I still think that there’s a lot more we can do with it. Because really, how would you take care of a dog in outerspace?

Fairside Stories 101: All of the Fairside games feature the same IP & underlying character framework, which get kids to explore kindness, integrity, and resilience. More about the parent app Fairside Stories and my work on it here here.

Fairside Stories was launched in 2021. The most popular game in it, Detention Disaster, was co-designed with kids and has more than 50,000 plays around the world. The game is currently on production hiatus because we ran out of money, but you can still download and play it on Android and iOS. I’d love to hear what you think