About Me
Game Designer | Narrative Designer | Live-Experience Lead
Professional Profile
I'm Andres Valbuena, a game designer, narrative designer, and live-experience lead. What ties the three together is systems: I design the rules that govern how a player's decisions propagate, then build and test them until the consequences actually land. Quests, dialogue, encounters, and economies are all the same problem to me — state that has to change believably in response to a choice.
On the design side I work hands-on in the engine, prototyping and tuning mechanics in Unreal Engine 5, Unity, Godot, and Creation Kit, and scripting the logic that makes them run — Papyrus quest and encounter systems for Fallout: Cascadia, branching dialogue in Ink for Kanpeki, and original narrative and faction systems in Articy Draft for Schism at Far Owl Studios. I came to all of it through modding, writing nation paths and event text for Hearts of Iron IV total conversions before moving into quest design for Cascadia and Beyond Skyrim: Elsweyr. That path taught me to work inside an existing IP, match a house style, and hand off content that is ready to implement rather than ready to interpret.
The live-experience half is not a sideline — it is three years of running things in real time for real people: 100+ sessions as a tabletop GM and a 1,000-attendee convention as events and scheduling manager. Designing under live conditions, where you cannot patch and the audience reacts immediately, is the fastest feedback loop I have found for learning what a system actually does as opposed to what the document says it does.
Key Achievements
Academic
Tencent Game Scholarship (2024–2025), GMU Computer Game Design. BA in Computer Game Design.
Industry
Gold, 2025 GDC Game Narrative Review. My analysis of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines examined how systems, player agency, and environmental narrative work together to create one of the most reactive RPGs ever shipped.
Selected writing, quest, and systems work is collected in Writing Samples, Game Design, and Tabletop Design.
Background
- Live-experience lead — GM, 100+ sessions: D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e, Foundry VTT. Branching narrative run in real time, live system and encounter balance, and continuity held consistent across years of accumulated player choices.
- Live-experience lead — Events & Scheduling Manager: 1,000-attendee convention. Programming, vendor relationships, and day-of operations; project management and cross-team coordination under hard deadlines.
- Writing & research: Fiction, original worlds; medieval history, theology, comparative mythology for grounded worldbuilding.
Favorite Games
Click a game to read why each matters to me.