This article originally ran in Back Alley Games Issue 20, November 2025

Uncle Henry Isn’t Home was one of the standouts of Chicaghoul 2025, a real deal point-and-click adventure game presented in an arcade cabinet and capturing the existential, lonely horror of both games like Myst and H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos. – Back Alley Games Editorial Team

Uncle Henry Isn’t Home is the very first video game I’ve ever worked on. If you’re familiar with my other works, you know I usually make TTRPG systems. Short fiction is often a part of those books, but it’s been a while since I did some real, meaty character writing instead of just improv. And that was so nice to get back into!

I pitched this idea to the Indie City Games discord: At some point, you read “The King in Yellow,” and the whole environment of the game changes and distorts. Off this concept, Dani and Renny reached out to join the team, and we recruited Nasr soon after.

From there, the rest of the plot fell into place. You’re going through the house of your relative who’s missing. Your uncle. You follow in his play-reading footsteps. There are puzzles in the house crafted by his madness. His name is Henry. Henry is a sweet, well-meaning buffoon of a man. 

Before the jam even began, our team was brainstorming. There were a ton of ideas flying around, and the team said I had the final say on any characterization. Some ideas were cut. Some morphed. Some were tabled for a full release. 

I knew I had to get all of Henry’s lines written before the halfway point, so we’d have time to record them. My spouse, Jordan, was a perfect fit for the voice acting. Living with him, I know how capable he is of doing interesting voices, and he also helped workshop the lines from something that would only be written down to lines that flowed when spoken. With his input, Uncle Henry came to life.

In general when I write, I need a decent amount of what I call “percolation time:” letting the ideas sit in the back of my mind for days or weeks before they’re formed enough to put onto the page.

The lead-up to the jam was absolutely perfect for this. Not being allowed to write anything down directly led to my ability to bang out a rough draft of the script in the first weekend. 

The hardest part was probably the puzzles, particularly when it came to different conditions being fulfilled or not. I’m not used to coming up with trees of dialogue, so that took some effort and workshopping.

I’m also dissatisfied with the amount of characterization (or lack thereof) of the player character. That’s something I want to expand on as we keep working on UHIH. 

About two weeks in, Renny asked if I would be willing to write my screenplay up in JSON. Importantly, the only coding experience I had was HTML for my Neopets pages in the early aughts. Renny was so patient, explained everything I needed to know, and provided me with examples of how to lay out each line. The “Myst-like” pitch was theirs as well, and I think it fits the game perfectly.

Dani’s audio processing skills are incredible, and the sound in “the distortion” is exactly how I envisioned it. Nasr hit the ground running with the visual design, and though there were some competing visions when it came to Henry’s character, ultimately everyone came together to create a solid picture of a flighty, untalented man who means well but is also deeply insecure. I definitely have the video game bug now. Working on a jam has given me more confidence in my ability to craft stories within this medium, and I’m so excited to see how Uncle Henry Isn’t Home continues to evolve into a fuller game experience.

Each member of the development team was kind enough to submit a reflection on their process, though we had to shorten them for length and clarity. Each of them can be read in full on itch.io: https://jergling.itch.io/uncle-henry-isnt-home