Aftab Tariq
Game Designer
Hi there, hello, I'm Aftab. I'm a game designer specializing in narrative and systems design. I have a fascination with the creation of stories and how games can use them to change people. In my designs, I emphasize meaningful interaction, critical reflection and the feeling of being extraordinary.I'm currently in my final semester for my Bachelor's in Game Design and Development at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Writer's Room
The Writers’ Room is a Story Engine fueled by collaborative storytelling. Similarly to how video game engines turn nebulous ideas into mechanics and interactive experiences, this Story Engine attempts to capture the essence of writing character driven stories while distributing narrative authority evenly between a group of writers.
Narrative Design Systems Design Mechanics Documentation Agile Prototyping Solo Project Playtesting Playable Demo 24 weeks
The Lord's Alliance
The Alchemist's Almanac
Tabletop Homebrew
Systems Design Critical Design Playtesting Team Project Brainstorming Playable Demo
12 weeks
Programming Unity C# Puzzle Environmental Storytelling Mechanics Solo Playtesting Playable Demo 2 weeks
Narrative Design Systems Design Mechanics Documentation Hobby Playtesting
Print and Play expansion for popular board game Lords of Waterdeep. Prompts critical reflection on the worker placement gameplay loop and creates a new co-op win condition relying on a tenuous peace between players.
An escape room style puzzle game about brewing potions. Made in Unity as a 2 week long solo project.
Homebrew for Tabletop Roleplaying Games that sparked my interest in mechanizing narrative systems.
Writers' Room
Capstone Project for Undergrad in Game Design
September 2025 - April 2026 (Ongoing)
Solo Design
Files for v0.90 (With Designer's Notes)
The Pitch
The Writers’ Room is a Story Engine fueled by collaborative storytelling. Similarly to how video game engines turn nebulous ideas into mechanics and interactive experiences, this Story Engine attempts to capture the essence of writing character driven stories while distributing narrative authority evenly between a group of writers.The Engine may be used in any way the users deem fit. As a “role-writing” game, a brainstorming method, team building activity and so on. It generates the pieces of a narrative that must still be put together through cinematography, game design, illustration or any other way that people share stories.The initial concept for my capstone was for a role playing game where the challenge isn't a procedural one, where it is unclear whether the player succeeds. The challenge is instead to declare the outcome and then justify why it came to be.Through the playtest process I eventually arrived at the current 'Story Engine' model for a set of mechanics that explore the process of group narrative and ideation. I believe that this is an ideal demonstration of my understanding of narrative and systems design. I wanted to do writing for games, so I developed a 'game' for writing.
The Work
I worked on this solo project for 6-10 hours a week during the final year of my undergraduate degree in Game Design while working full time. I used an Agile project management framework, with periodic sprints, status reports and weekly SCRUM meetings with my cohort. My supervisors played the role of the publisher, asking questions and reviewing my work periodically to keep me on schedule.I playtested "internally" every week with my cohort as a recurring group of players as I iterated through the various builds. I conducted two major "public" playtests where I invited non-Game Designers to play the game, generating playtest report forms for the same. All documentation for the project can be made available upon request. Transcripts from playtest sessions have been excluded due to privacy requests.I iterated through many different mechanics in early builds when the project still resembled an RPG: narrative archetypes as "classes", numerical objectives leading to a complex economy dealing with genre, tropes and subversion and even spell like abilities for different writing styles. Ultimately, embracing the meta nature of the system and using it as a methodology to produce stories rather through mechanics seemed the natural way forward.
Reference
My supervisors Dr Charles Wells and Dr Steve Wilcox may be contacted as references on this project.
The Lord's Alliance
Co-Operative Expansion for Lord's of Waterdeep
January 2025 - April 2025
Team Project
Itch.io Page for Print and Play files
Original Boardgame by Renegade Game Studios
The Pitch
The Lords’ Alliance Expansion for Lords of Waterdeep is focused on building upon the existing gameplay and design philosophy of the fan favourite game. It is designed to keep the core values of the game while changing it in ways to encourage ethical reflection, collaboration, and meaningful social deduction style conflict.Lords now have personal goals that can lead to them coming out on top or dragging everybody down. Adventures lives are also at risk whenever they go on quests so without the proper preparations some may be lost forever.
The Work
As part of the four man team designing this expansion, I participated in group meetings where we pitched ideas and bounced them off one another. No aspect of the expansion made it into the final design without being tweaked in some way by each member. In particular I did a lot of work on balancing all victory conditions and virtue bonuses of the Lord's against one another while being consistent with the narrative identity of each Lord established in Forgotten Realms lore.I also lead the work on the technical wording and documentation of the rulebook, ensuring that it stays consistent with the style of the base game while efficiently explaining the new and revised mechanics presented in our expansion.
Reference
Our supervisor Dr Steve Wilcox may be contacted as a reference for this project.
The Alchemist's Almanac
Tech Demo made in Unity
September 2024 - December 2024
Solo Developer
Unity Executable
The Pitch
The Alchemist's Almanac is a short puzzle game with two levels that I developed in 20-30 hours over a two week stretch. I had worked on programming several different mechanics individually before, and so I wanted to bring all of my learning together into one playable build. The mechanics are vaguely inspired by the Alchemy seen in Kingdom Come Deliverance, as that was a game I was enjoying at the time. The theme of entering a wizard's diary is based loosely off a D&D character I played once (See Tabletop Homebrew section)
The Work
I developed the whole game from the ground up in C#, except for art assets which were acquired from the Unity Asset Store (Credits can be found in a .txt file with the download above).My original intention had been to include an additional UI for a 'Tome' that gave lore entries for the different ingredients used in the game, to help players with additional context to solve the puzzles. This had to be cut due to time constraints however.
Reference
My supervisor Mark Shannelly may be contacted as a reference for this project.
Tabletop Homebrew
Classes, Subclasses and Campaigns
March 2020 - Current Day
Hobby
The Pitch
Tabletop Roleplay is what sparked my interest in interactive narrative design. Today, it is my single minded fixation to design narrative sandboxes and tools for interaction within it, and then giving them to the players to observe emergent storytelling. In my everyday life, I bring this understanding of stories with me in everything that I do.
The Work
Over the six odd years that I have been a Game Master in an assortment of TTRPG systems, I have always designed homebrew content for players and myself to mess around with. I am no longer satisfied with the vast majority of this homebrew, having grown as a designer and a person. However, they remain a useful artifact to refer to see what my design intent was. These documents can be made available upon request.