LISA Hosokawa
Game writer, narrative designer, passable houseplant
An author with publication credits in some of North America's top literary magazines, Lisa Hosokawa is a professional writer and editor of 10+ years in print and digital publishing. Currently writing on contract with Lightspeed LA on Last Sentinel, she's also edited English-localized indie and AAA mobile games since 2022 and designed narratives for indies since 2023. Born in a town halfway between a US military base and Hiroshima, she helps studios center unique experiences and identities in games—the stuff that makes players feel compassion for difference, resonance in likeness, and joy in agency.
HIGHLIGHTS
AAA Open-world Action
Last Sentinel
—Lightspeed LA
Writer for narrative-focused, open-world action game set decades from now in a reconstructed Tokyo.
Crafting narrative content to support open-world and mission content, including but not limited to VO writing, character bios, POI narrative overviews, and player feedback dialogues. Writing world-building documentation. Providing Japanese cultural and linguistic insights to a largely Western development team targeting a primarily North American audience.
AAA mobile RPG
Under NDA
Editor of English localization of AAA mobile RPG. Under NDA until 2027.
Trimmed and heightened underdeveloped dialogue and marketing copy with 32- and 64-character limits.
Consulted wikis, game design documentation, and localization team to make editorial decisions regarding new and existing lore, items, skills, and NPCs.
Ensured consistency in wording, punctuation, and style.
Indie mobile farm sim
Under NDA
Editor of English localization of indie mobile farm sim with a fuzzy twist. Under NDA until 2026.
Edited and proofread localized narrative and marketing copy.
Corrected mistranslations.
Consulted team to make editorial decisions regarding mainstream North American awareness of Japanese cultural references.
Ensured consistency in wording, punctuation, and style.
Punned aggressively.
Indie Folk Horror (10 min. playthrough)
The Lake
A despicable man must test his luck against the curse of a haunted lake, or else lose a bet, his marriage, and maybe his life.
The Lake is an interactive retelling of an eerie Japanese folktale. Play it in Twine with headphones in 10 minutes.
Samples: NPC, location, barks
Junction
Play as a private investigator: track down a runaway heiress before a legion of infectious machines turns her into one of the glamorous but troubled city’s disappeared people.
Junction is a neon-noir interactive fiction game kicked off by a series of writing exercises. It is the 45-minute opening act of a larger fangame not currently intended for development.
"Not a word is wasted, not a single breath, as [Lisa] 'translates' between the living and the dead, speaking for those whose letters are lost and whose stories have not been told."
ABOUT
Lisa Hosokawa
Konnichiwa, y'all.
Born in a town halfway between a US military base and Hiroshima, Lisa Hosokawa is an award-winning writer of stories about belonging and resistance in hostile worlds.
She leaves deathly serious fingerprints on her short stories and interactive fiction as well as AAA games like Last Sentinel. But she's fond too of buckling swash and cooking up whimsy for Bare-Bones Apothecary and other indie gems.
She’s also trimmed and heightened dialogue for the English localizations of indie and AAA mobile games since 2022. Before that, she collaborated with multicultural, remote teams as a professional writer, editor, and translator in the print and digital publishing world for 10 years.
She’s an alum of the IGDA Foundation’s Virtual Exchange, Susan O’Connor’s the Narrative Department, and Writing for Video Games by UBCx, as well as a former artist-in-residence at Socially Distant Art and the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities.
An erstwhile translator and a card-carrying editor, she's the weirdo plus-one at your party who does your dishes and plays with the cat.
FAVORITE THINGS
Original Dragon Age and Mass Effect trilogies, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, Life is Strange: True Colors, The Last of Us, Gerda: A Flame in Winter, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
Octavia E. Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, James S.A. Corey and Miller's hat
In Bruges, Andor, Samurai Champloo, True Detective (season one), Sugar, Totoro.
"The Uses of Anger" by Audre Lorde: "What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face?"
Activities
IGDA Foundation Velocity Recipient | Selected from several hundred applicants as one of 13 Velocity grantees in the 2022 International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Foundation Virtual Exchange.
UBC Writing for Video Games Certificate | Awarded a professional certificate in writing for video games for completing all six courses from the University of British Columbia.
Game Writing Masterclass I | Received instruction from Susan O'Connor of BioShock fame and workshopped portfolio pieces with peers.
UCSD Copyediting Certificate | Awarded a specialized certificate in copyediting for completing the 12-month program from the University of California, San Diego Extension.
IGA Level 2 | Completed introductory bootcamp with Indie Game Academy and made a Spyro clone in Unity.
University of Cambridge MicroMasters in Writing for Performance and the Entertainment Industries | Completed 30 credit hours toward Master of Studies (MSt) in Writing for Performance (ECD 2025)
Select Publications
"The Blue Glow." khōréō, September 2023."The Night You Swallow the Moon." The Kenyon Review, Summer 2023. (Listen to the audio version on SoundCloud.)"Silent." Firefly Ridge Literary Magazine, 2016."Summer Triangle." Firefly Ridge Literary Magazine, 2015."Some Desperate Glory." In Debs: Four Women Writers on the Verge, edited by Caitlin Johnson. St. Andrews College Press, 2014."The Second Son." In Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, edited by David Jack Bell and Molly McCaffrey. Main Street Rag, 2010.Crosswind. St. Andrews College Press, 2009. (Alan Bunn Memorial Chapbook Award Winner.)
Software & Skills
| Organization | Markup/Tools | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Jira/Confluence | Ink | Unity |
| Perforce | Articy | Godot |
| Trello | JavaScript | Twine |
| Airtable | HTML | |
| Figma | Final Draft | |
| Miro | ||
| Obsidian | ||
| Notion | ||
| Scrivener | ||
| MemSource/Phrase | ||
| Google Suite | ||
| Microsoft Suite | ||
| Adobe Suite |
"Not a word is wasted, not a single breath, as [Lisa] 'translates' between the living and the dead, speaking for those whose letters are lost and whose stories have not been told." - Beth Copeland, author of Blue Honey, recipient of the 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize
Commercial projects
Narrative
Last Sentinel
Narrative-focused, AAA open-world action game set in a dystopian Tokyo.
Crafting narrative content to support open-world and mission content, including but not limited to VO writing, character bios, POI narrative overviews, and player feedback dialogues. Writing world-building documentation. Providing Japanese cultural and linguistic insights to a largely Western development team targeting a primarily North American audience.
Project sky burials
Indie origami platformer inspired by Gris. In pre-production.
Collaborative creation of player character and major NPCs.
Designing the spine of a linear narrative to cohere and resonate with platforming and origami mechanics.
Writing worldbuilding and magic system bible.
Supporting creative direction and pre-production.
Localization
AAA RPG
Editor of English localization of a AAA mobile RPG. Under NDA until 2027.
Trimmed and heightened underdeveloped dialogue and marketing copy with 32- and 64-character limits.
Consulted wikis, game design documentation, and localization team to make editorial decisions regarding new and existing lore, items, skills, and NPCs.
Ensured consistency in wording, punctuation, and style.
Indie Farm Sim
Editor of English localization of an indie mobile farm sim with a fuzzy twist. Under NDA until 2026.
Edited and proofread localized narrative and marketing copy.
Corrected mistranslations.
Consulted team to make editorial decisions regarding mainstream North American awareness of Japanese cultural references.
Ensured consistency in wording, punctuation, and style.
Punned aggressively.
Non-Commercial projects
The Lake
A despicable man must test his luck against the curse of a haunted lake, or else lose a bet, his marriage, and maybe his life.
The Lake is an interactive retelling of an eerie Japanese folktale. Play it in Twine with headphones in 10 minutes.
#story #linear #horror #audio #atmospheric
Junction
Play as a private investigator: track down a runaway heiress before a legion of infectious machines turns her into one of the glamorous but troubled city’s disappeared people.
Junction is a neon-noir interactive fiction game kicked off by a series of writing exercises. It is the 45-minute opening act of a larger fangame not currently intended for development.
#story #branch and bottleneck #character #location #barks #neon noir
Bare-Bones Apothecary
By day, craft potions based on irresponsibly vague descriptions. By night, rob the graves of clients you've "accidentally" poisoned.
Two parts potion puzzler, one part visual novel, Bare-Bones Apothecary placed 3rd in the IGDA Foundation 2022 Game Jam, themed "combination."
#character #item descriptions #dialogue #story #branching #cute
Wrapped in a Silhouette
Grandma’s in the hospital. It’s okay; it’s just a broken arm, not like Grandpa. She’s getting released tomorrow. You’re getting her clothes from her house.
Wrapped is a game about family secrets after the war, made in roughly 96 hours using Ink and Unity. Play it in 5–10 minutes.
#story #branching #unity #quick and dirty #moody
Just for fun: learning Unity
Around the time I started drooling over the clever prose and systems of Blades in the Dark, I began making tiny experiences in Unity.
In June 2024, I made a 3D Spyro-clone with the Indie Game Academy and turned Spyro into a hellhound trapped in a Victorian mansion.
In February 2024, I made a 2D inventory full of weapons and their Blades-esque descriptions. (Here's a link to the spreadsheet. Have I mentioned I adore spreadsheets?)
#unity #blades-in-the-dark #incomplete #gothic #beauty-and-the-beast-ruined-me
Video script, editing, and transcription by me, sans ad libbing by the boy.
CONTACT
The Lake
A despicable man must test his luck against the curse of a haunted lake, or else lose a bet, his marriage, and maybe his life.
The Lake is an interactive retelling of an eerie Japanese folktale. Play it in Twine with headphones in 10 minutes.
#story #linear #horror #audio #atmospheric
Don't like embeds? See the PDF here:
Process & Postmortem
Bare-Bones Apothecary
Having recently mistaken the arsenic for table sugar, your bones are resurrected to manage a bustling potion shop during its busiest season. But you can’t go to the fall festival looking like this. Good thing there’s enough time to rob body parts from the fresh graves of those you’ve “accidentally” poisoned.
Two parts potion puzzler, one part visual novel, Bare-Bones Apothecary placed 3rd in the IGDA Foundation 2022 Game Jam, themed "combination." Currently in alpha.
#character #item descriptions #dialogue #story #branching #cute
Don't like embeds? See the PDFs here:
Process & Postmortem
Item Descriptions & Dialogue
Wrapped in a Silhouette
Grandma’s in the hospital. It’s okay; it’s just a broken arm, not like Grandpa. She’s getting released tomorrow. You’re getting her clothes from her house.
Wrapped is a game about family secrets after the war, made in roughly 96 hours using Ink and Unity.
Play it in 5–10 minutes.
#story #branching #unity #quick and dirty #serious
Don't like embeds? See the PDFs here:
Process & Postmortem
Junction
Play as a private investigator: track down a runaway heiress before a legion of infectious machines turns her into one of the glamorous but troubled city’s disappeared people.
Junction is a neon-noir interactive fiction game kicked off by a series of writing exercises, seen below. It is the 45-minute opening act of a larger fangame not currently intended for development.
#story #branch and bottleneck #character #location #barks #neon noir #script
Don't like embeds? See the PDFs here:
When a Game in Development Needs a New Story
Won't a New Mechanic Break the Story?
Narrative Flowchart: Levels 1 + 2
Writing a Character Codex Entry
Writing a New Character with the Team
Writing an Avatar's Relationships with NPCs
Writing a Memorable Location and Boss Fight
Writing Boss Barks
Writing a cutscene and gameplay script
Making the Game
Drafting bios and scripts in Scrivener
Making a paper mockup.
Managing tasks in Trello
Writing Ink and JavaScript markup text
Mixing audio in Audacity
