About me
Hi! I’m Josh Labelle, a Toronto-based writer, game designer, and award-winning interactive fiction author. I’m also (probably?) the only person who’s written dialogue for both Mickey Mouse and Kim Kardashian.
I currently work as the Creative Director at Gameloft on Disney Dreamlight Valley, a life-sim adventure game for console/PC. I also write interactive fiction — my interactive fantasy novel from Choice of Games, “A Crown of Sorcery and Steel”, is available now. In the past, career highlights have included working as the Senior Narrative World Designer on Disney Dreamlight Valley, as well as having been the Lead Narrative Designer at Glu/EA Mobile. In 2020, my Twine game Tavern Crawler became the first Twine game to place 1st in the annual Interactive Fiction Competition.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR - GAMELOFT
DISNEY DREAMLIGHT VALLEY
(Winner:
Best Early Access Game - PC Gamer
Best Game Design - Webbies People’s Choice Awards
Nominee:
Best Family Game - BAFTA
Best Family Game - DICE Awards
Game of the Year - Canadian Game Awards)
Set the high-level vision for the game, as well as providing feedback and guidance across the team.
In the past, I acted as the Senior Narrative World Designer, writing dialogue and copy for the main story as well as a variety of additional quests.
I take ownership of accurately capturing the voices and essences of the characters in narrative content, from Mickey to Buzz Lightyear to Ursula.
Contribute design towards environmental storytelling and emergent narrative from gameplay systems.
Take the lead in communicating with Disney to ensure the brand integrity of our stories and huge cast of characters.
Develop live ops pipelines and review processes for the narrative team.
LEAD Narrative designer - Glu/EA Mobile
KIM KARDASHIAN HOLLYWOOD
(Mobile)
Developed and piloted new narrative live ops strategies that significantly improved key metrics
Wrote and implemented fan-favourite quest content, with an eye towards surprising and delighting players with new spins on old characters.
Collaborated with design on new social features, creating a narrative onboarding experience that lead to high user adoption of the features
Worked with marketing and community teams to create involving content for our social media channels
Took a data-informed approach to decision-making and made significant improvements to older game systems.
ORIGINALS: INTERACTIVE STORY SERIES
(Mobile)
Supported a team of narrative designers and remote writers as the acting narrative lead on a visual novel product
Coordinated schedules, set product direction, provided feedback, set standards for monetization, and developed retention strategies
Worked closely with product managers, lead designers, art, and the studio creative director
Contributed to the design of new features, tools, and pipeline improvements
Stories I launched made up 60% of the daily revenue at some points during the beta launch, and set the bar for future stories
INTERACTIVE FICTION
A Crown of Sorcery and steel
(Text-based adventure game from Choice of Games, out in 2022)
Swing a sword, delve dungeons, and lead a resistance against the tyrannical queen of a war-torn fantasy realm. Will you be an elf, orc, dwarf, or human?
“Crown of Sorcery and Steel” is a 300-thousand word interactive novel by Josh Labelle. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
For centuries, the kingdom of Kanda has been at war with Queen Nidana and her infernal machines. Each day, further reaches of the kingdom fall under her boot, overwhelmed by her enchanted army of iron constructs. Will you unite the realm and end the queen’s reign of terror... or join her and rule by her side?
TAVERN CRAWLER - TEXT ADVENTURE
1st place finisher out of 103 games in the 26th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition
Nominated for Best Game, Best Story, and Best NPCs in the 2020 XYZZY awards which honor excellence in interactive fiction
The first Twine game to ever take the top prize in the annual Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp)
65,000+ word fantasy text adventure
Features branching dialogue, quests, stats, a lite in-game economy, significant choices, multiple endings, and companion relationships that evolve based on your choices.
Sentry - INTERACTIVE SHORT STORY
Arcade Showcase Game at the Hand Eye Society’s Wordplay Festival 2018
“Josh Labelle’s good, unsettling game pits you against obscene user content as quality control for a social network. Labelle includes pixelated art with descriptions, and gives you a cheatsheet of guidelines to decide what stays or goes. Watch out for despair. “ - Caroline Delbert, Autosave.TV
WRETCH - TEXT ADVENTURE
3rd Place in Ectocomp 2018
You awaken in a lab. Your head is filled with memories not wholly your own. The mysterious doctor regards you from the doorway. Will you try to earn his favor? Or escape his ramshackle house? Can you make a friend and find a place in the world? Or would you prefer to get impossibly drunk trying? The story of a teenaged Frankenstein's monster who attends a raging party, Wretch! starts as a Mary Shelley novel, but ends as a John Hughes movie.
Workshops and talks
“Beware and Warning! This Tweet is Not Like Other Tweets!: Social Networks As A Medium For Interactive Fiction” - workshop on social media as a medium for interactive fiction at Wordplay 2018
“An Opportunity To Build Something: Grief and Tabletop Gaming“ - featured talk on tabletop games as a way to process difficult emotions at Wordplay 2020
Arcade space judge for Wordplay 2019
OTHER EXPERIENCE
Experience in the e-learning space, designing and writing interactive chatbot experiences that conveyed curriculum material through compelling narratives
Four years of experience in film distribution, with an understanding of media pipelines, digital deliveries, and editing software
BFA in film from Toronto Metropolitan University
OTHER STUFF ABOUT ME THAT MIGHT POTENTIALLY BE INTERESTING TO SOMEBODY OUT THERE
Tabletop roleplaying fanatic
Tabletop sparked my initial interest in making games; by hacking and writing my own modules for Dungeons & Dragons, I saw how mechanics influenced play and encouraged different kinds of experiences. Soon, I began exploring ways to replicate the feeling I got from tabletop within interactive fiction and video games – for those times when I couldn't get a bunch of friends around a table.
I have d20s tattooed on my forearms.
Favourite games
I’m still chasing the experience of playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for the first time when I was 13.
“Fallout: New Vegas” is my north stars of narrative design for the way it balances emergent player experience and authored narrative in a huge reactive open world where you can do almost anything.
Runners up include Tears of the Kingdom, The Witcher 3, and Mass Effect 2.
In the mobile space, Inkle games like “80 Days” and “Sorcery” are my ideal experiences because of the way they combine beautiful prose, compelling choices, and sleek, simple UI and UX.
When it comes to F2P, there’s no game I’ve sunk more time into than Simpsons: Tapped Out, and yet I still somehow haven’t gotten enough donuts to buy Hank Scorpio’s Volcano Lair.
MISCELLANEOUS
Love karaoke.
Classic film buff - at my happiest when watching Spaghetti westerns, MGM musicals, film noir, samurai movies.
Contact me
Interested in reading the full scripts sampled here? Have any queries? Want to see a more comprehensive resume? Wish to pay me money in exchange for writing services? Kindly fill out the form on the Contact page or shoot me an email at joshmlabelle (at) cogsandspanners.com.
(Cogs [kogs, kawgs] -- the bits that chug along and keep an engine functioning how it's supposed to.
Spanners [span-ners] -- the sudden, unexpected malfunctions that send everything spinning off in a new direction)