Game Design
T-Shape Profile
I started out with the legendary Piranhas in the Ruhr area, working in quality assurance and as a documenter, while devouring book after book about game design. After all, I was a career changer after learning computer science assistence for three years. During my junior time, I worked on object placement in the world of Magalan and on designing combat and item systems for a title that was never released. However, my primary role was as a narrative designer. I wrote quests and lore for the world. The advantage of a medium-sized studio is the generalization, which allows for a broad education.
In 2018, I started regularly attending industry events and met the people who, in 2020, brought me into an internship at Piranha Bytes. If anyone asks me how to get into the industry, the answer is always the same: Get out there and talk to people. A good impression gets you into a studio. And how do you stay there long-term? By continuously learning and contributing to the games! I always was a gamer and gaming was my window into the world. It just seemed natural that I joined that great and challenging industry.
Piranha Bytes was my springboard into the industry, where I stayed until the bitter end in 2024. My last contribution was working on a pitch for an IP that was never meant to be. Sadly, the work of the last few years, also for an unannounced IP, was discarded, as the entire company was shut down. For any artist, that’s a tough blow, as we spent those years addressing so much of the feedback from our players. The studio always stayed grounded and was like a family. Telling immersive stories was my favorite task at Piranha Bytes.
First Steps
Remote Working
After initial job applications for the industry came to nothing, I trained at a vocational school for IT assistants, and an internship eventually led me into the field.
Elex II
This title was the first one I was heavily involved in. Unfortunately, the following title was never released, we all put so much work in.
Even tho the studio was just 15 miles away, I joined in home office during Corona and due to convenience we all kept up that flexible working style.
Networking
Here I met Willi Bäcker of Factor 5, an experienced guy from one of the few old hand studios of Germany!
Before joining Piranha Bytes, I visited Gamescom for the sensory overload and the fun of it; since then, I’ve used it for networking with new people and catching up with old friends.
Early Projects
Even in elementary school, I wrote diary entries on my dad’s PC using a text editor and embellished them into stories. I put them together on crude homepages and wrote many stories with page counts reaching triple digits.
In school I learned HTML, altered values in XML files to cheat in games, and pasted my classmates’ faces onto sprite sheets for platformer games. In Windows briefcases (XP) and folders, I organized labyrinths made of text documents for non-linear stories.
Initially I used online role-playing chats but later joined friends for pen-and-paper sessions and wrote fanfictions on platforms like Wattpad, fanfiktion.de, and in the Schreibnacht forum. Later I signed up at the creative network UPH in Essen, which was closed and completely restructured during the COVID pandemic.
When I learned C# at Dr. Heuer Academy in 2016, I soon neglected the practice material to build the framework for a text-based RPG in the console. My teachers approved, saying I’d actually learn more this way. That project was
Stories from Unterberg, and it's plot later evolved into
The Sixth Dawn. For this story, I wrote hundreds of pages in 2018 and combined with more ideas during my Piranha Bytes days I merged it to project
Thorwald
in 2026.
In spring 2025, I completed a six-month training program as a 3D artist in Blender. The topics covered modeling, sculpting, rigging, animation, shading, and rendering. Also I completed a certification for basics of Unreal Engine.
Elementality
To develop the characters in my stories more believable, I created the “Element Types” system in 2018. This system was designed to better illustrate and define archetypes, and I worked it out in detail until 2022.
3D Portfolio
Some works from 3D artist school (2024/2025)
Other Projects
There are many projects I can’t say much about yet because they’re still in the very early stages of development, even tho they're hot like a cup of Indonesian noodle soup! That’s how it is! Many design documents and prototypes are created, but they don’t always turn into a full game!
Some of them I’ve been working on for what feels like half my life. Over the years, these projects have changed themes, platforms, and directions, sometimes even merging and being completely reimagined.
One major project I’m committed to in the future is Thorwald. I’m planning a dark RPG that gives players as much control as possible about dialogues, while keeping the tech behind the combat system minimalistic.
Another project is The Streets of Weierbruck. I’ve lived in Gelsenkirchen for a decade now, a city that frequently ends up ranked last in cultural surveys across Germany. Weierbruck is my vision of how the world might look down on Gelsenkirchen. The catastrophic district of Ückendorf, south of the central station, serves as a clear inspiration. However, Weierbruck is entirely fictional, and so will be the story.
Prototypes for this project have already been developed in Unity, Unreal and the Construct Engine, only to be scrapped later. These kinds of endeavors are great for exploring new platforms. A ton of other ideas are looming withing my project folders...
