hello and welcome!hi! i'm elias, and i also go by siffrin online.some kinda quote here? wld be funky [tba]

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about me!hi! thanks for checking out this site!
[tba]i've been told that "the closer something is to "Weird Horror Thing" the more likely it is [i] will either know it or be interested in it", and, yeah!some examples of the above and inspirations of mine would be_{- Anatomy by Kitty Horrorshow, and really anything about Haunted houses or architecture that "rejects humanity".- Mouthwashing by Wrong Organ. the medium of a video game beautifully working with the idea of seeing what you want to see.- Hello Charlotte by etherane. i've experienced the game multiple times, but still cannot make sense of the surreal last episode in the best way possible.}projects-wise, i enjoy making the UI and making sure everything is stylized and given form in a fitting and consistent way.
[tba]

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inspirations:
- The Magnus Archives:
The Spiral
MAG183 - Monument- House of Leaves- BEDROCK.ZIP I + II-MyHouse.wad

currently not uploaded on itch.io or anywhere else. link will be added when it is available!

"what lies beyond?" was an incredibly self-indulgent project!! :]i chose something fairly specific and niche, but close to me for the theme: The Spiral from The Magnus Archives, a "name" given to the fear of not being able to trust your own mind, of reality as you know it being wrong.the highlight of its presentation for me was one of the evaluators thinking there was some kind of pattern to the doors in a certain area that would lead you the right way.
afterwards, i was absolutely delighted to tell them that there was no pattern at all, and the path was being randomly generated.i would definitely say this was a success - the above scenario was the exact experience i wanted this project to be in its entirety.

process:

my "proper goal" for the game was to create a sense of repetition, a recognizable pattern, and then to break it. one of the ways in which i did that was keeping the colors of the three main areas tied together.it was a deliberate choice to use GameMaker for this project, as I was interested in trying something new and we had only been taught Unity until that point. grhjdfdhjf code instead of visual scripting bc Code, uhhhhh what else. [wip]

i could not decide on a direction to go in with this project for a long time,
until BEDROCK.ZIP II released right after our study trip to Berlin.BEDROCK.ZIP is essentially
House of Leaves translated into the format of a Minecraft ARG, a combination of three things i love a LOT.part II provided a new character's perspective on the events from part I, which made me want to create something based on how i experienced and interpreted both parts in turn...so i did!

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click on the thumbnails to go to the itch.io page!

i gave myself a challenge to complete three prompt-based gamejams over the course of several weeks - one three hour long gamejam to get the idea down and around a week to polish the project. it was surprisingly fun - i ended up not overthinking everything having to be perfect and built up some confidence in quickly setting up a prototype for a concept.

• back

inspirations:
- Slay the Princess- Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes- The Stanley Parable- Horror RPGMaker games

wip!

the escape room thing i came up with for uvwd / pitchprep

• back

• itch.io

Sculpting the Future was a project where our team worked with Impact Makers to reimagine the questionnaire on the CreaTures Framework website, and was another time i specifically worked on a game's UI and item assets.our game was set in a small town, where the town square statue was recently destroyed. the town looked empty without it, so it was up to the player to sculpt a new statue that represented the town and its inhabitants using the items they received from the NPCs and picked up around town.

process:

the sculpting minigame UI and the illustrations for those items were my tasks.
we ended up using a font that i made of my own handwriting, as that fit the game's vibe more than a default font.it was very funny and a little jarring to see the in-game text "handwritten" by me, but it did look more cohesive and personal.something that ended up being very useful was me providing a layered .psd file with all the UI parts separate, so the developer could move and resize things in-engine without me having to send a new version every time.

we ended up going with a very warm color palette for the entire game, which we got by applying a filter on top of the original colors associated with the dimensions.for the characters, the artists on the team all made a design for the learning and co-creating dimensions to see what elements and whose style we thought would fit the game best.we kept the items "vague" on purpose so that one item could reflect multiple dimensions, and so even if an item was connected to a certain NPC, the player would not feel forced to include it.