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 for 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 from agency.

A picture of chapbooks and anthologies on a medium-brown wooden surface; the top book reads "Commutability" over a blurry, high-contrast photograph of the inside of a train station.

AAA Open-world Action Game

Last Sentinel
—Lightspeed LA

Contract - Remote - 2024–ongoing

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 Fantasy RPG

Under NDA

Contract - Remote - 2022–2023

Editor of English localization of AAA mobile RPG. Under NDA.

  • 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.

An image of a figure standing at night in front of a massive fountain carved with statues of robed and winged figures. The angle makes it look as though the figure is sprouting wings.

Indie mobile farm sim

Under NDA

Contract - Remote - 2022

Editor of English localization of indie mobile farm sim. Under NDA.

  • 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.

An image of red apples in a plastic bag stored in the back of a blue truck.

Indie Folk Horror (10 min. playthrough)

The Lake

Non-commercial - 2022

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.

Painted cover art for THE LAKE, its title in English and Japanese faintly glowing in a corner. Most of the cover is taken up by blue-gray water, framed by bare branches. A woven basket floats in the lake's center, abandoned.

Samples: NPC, location, barks

Junction

Non-commercial - 2023

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."

Drop me a line if

  • You're looking for a writer to help you craft unforgettable characters and interactive stories with all the feels;

  • You're in need of an editor to help you clean up your game's script; or

  • You want a free haiku about cats or whatever.

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.

A picture of author and games writer Lisa Hosokawa, a mixed-Japanese and White nonbinary person with a shoulder-length, curly sidecut, dark eyes, and light beige skin, standing in front of dark-brown wooden siding.

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

Select Publications

A picture of chapbooks and anthologies on a medium-brown wooden surface; the top book reads "Commutability" over a blurry, high-contrast photograph of the inside of a train station.

"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

OrganizationMarkup/ToolsEngine
Jira/ConfluenceInkUnity
PerforceArticyGodot
TrelloJavaScriptTwine
AirtableHTML 
FigmaFinal 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

Contract - Remote - 2024–ongoing

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

Contract - Remote - 2023–2024

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.

A color illustration of the back of a pale, bald elf clad in impressive leather armor, standing under a red tent

Localization

AAA Fantasy RPG

Contract - Remote - 2022

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.

An image of a figure standing at night in front of a massive fountain carved with statues of robed and winged figures. The angle makes it look as though the figure is sprouting wings.

Indie Farm Sim

Contract - Remote - 2022–2023

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.

An image of red apples in a plastic bag stored in the back of a blue truck.

Non-Commercial projects

The Lake

Non-commercial - 2022

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

Painted cover art for THE LAKE, its title in English and Japanese faintly glowing in a corner. Most of the cover is taken up by blue-gray water, framed by bare branches. A woven basket floats in the lake's center, abandoned.

Junction

Non-commercial - 2023

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

Non-commercial - 2022

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

Digitally painted cover art for BARE-BONES APOTHECARY: a confused skeleton in a cloak stares at a bubbling cauldron, surrounded by a happy frog and four customers of dubious intent.

Wrapped in a Silhouette

Non-commercial - 2022

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

A sepia photograph of a young, fair-skinned woman in a buttoned dress, standing beside a man with tanned arms holding an infant in a polka-dot dress. Faces are obscured. The title, "Wrapped in a Silhouette," is superimposed in a somber font.

Just for fun: learning Unity

Non-commercial - 2024

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

Drop me a line if

  • You're looking for a writer who loves crafting layered, believable characters and interactive stories with all the feels;

  • You're in need of a copyeditor to help you clean up your game's script; or

  • You want a free haiku about cats or whatever.

Junction

Non-commercial - 2024

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

When a Game in Development Needs a New Story

Won't a New Mechanic Break the Story?

Narrative Flowchart

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