2023 - 2025

Vesper is a narrative RPG platform from a fully remote 12-person team that transforms written stories into playable games.

Combining the Unity 6 game client with a suite of web based tools Vesper users will be able to write their story and generate that script into a real narrative RPG.

Initial collaboration with professional authors, dungeon masters and comedians has brought to life worlds of humanoid frogs, colourful wizards and giants searching for aid from a god!

Vesper creators use a custom built authoring tool - The Composer - to write their game scripts. This tool aids the author in mapping out their game world in a series of areas called Zones.

By describing characters, items, areas and landmarks in each zone the writer builds up a world for the player to explore.

Using the simple but powerful custom writing structure and syntax a writer is able to add dialogue, design puzzles and even interact with the game camera and add visual effects to their game.

At runtime, once the script has completed the parsing, generation, and level design processes, the finalized output is loaded as game data by the client, allowing players to enter a tangible, interactive game world.

AWS

NestJS

Node.js

Typescript

Python

PostgreSQL

Docker

Terraform

React

Next.js

Fastify

Prisma ORM

I am the Senior Backend Developer at Vesper - and was fortunate to be involved from the very start of the project.

I have been responsible for -

The architecting, development and maintenance of the AWS infrastructure
REST API design and implementation - these APIs served the Unity 6 game client, various game editor tools including level design and procedural generation editors and several web based tools
Websocket backend to allow real time interactions and collaborative tools
Design and maintenance of several Databases (PostgreSQL), cloud storage and compute as well as all networking, load balancing and other architectural concerns
Design and development of several web based tools such as a CMS and The Composer - an authoring tool used by narrative staff and partnered creative writers
Directly working with game development, narrative, audio and other team members ensuring requirements were met and functionality was added and available as needed
Working very closely with the specialist procedural generation developer to aid building of Unity procgen tools - and eventually migrating the compute and storage for this complex data flow to the backend
Development and implementation of a non-technical writer friendly structure and syntax for controlling game functions like camera, minigames, dialogue, VFX and much more