About Us

Wayscape is a narrative experience for web and mobile that aims to revolutionize participatory storytelling. It invites users to contribute to a shared storyworld set in 1930s New York, using images and short fiction to explore the terrible toll the Great Depression took on the city’s inhabitants… and their dreams.

Experience our Playable Prototype

Living Worlds

Source: NYPL Digital Collections

Community Driven

By browsing an annotated city atlas, users can tap on storypoints to expand illustrations, character backstories, and documents with crucial clues to an occult conspiracy. As this plot unfolds week-by-week they can submit their own stories and artwork, adding new scenes to the fabric of the world. Our users will shape the course of the story as each new mystery is solved.

Rich Mythology

Delve into the cryptic lore and forbidden truths of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Inspired by the shared storytelling tradition of 1930s pulp serials, Wayscape imagines a world with chain-smoking detectives and ancient, unspeakable terrors. History and nightmare collide in an urban horror story where the darkest threat comes from within.

Dreaming Dark

“I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with me for solace. We swore to one another that the city was exactly the same, and still alive...”

—H.P. Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep

Source: NYPL Digital Collections

Our Team

Pat Mooney is a writer and designer of games and interactive media. His work spans a variety of forms, from hypertext fiction and educational games to tabletop role-playing systems, with a focus on accessibility and user agency.As project lead for Wayscape, he is interested in the balance of usability, engagement, and immersion, and storytelling systems of all shapes and sizes.
Dylan Shad is a game designer and audio engineer who studied music and sound design at Bennington college between bouts of designing physical games and running tabletop RPG campaigns, and more recently received his MFA in design and technology from Parsons School of Design. He is continuing work on Wayscape, in the role of Chief Technical Officer, where he oversees the systems design and technical production of the project.
Niki Selken is a designer, educator and technologist living in Brooklyn, NY and teaching at Parsons School of Design. Her focus is on wearable technology and interaction design. Niki’s design work has been featured by Yahoo Tech, Adafruit, and Make Magazine among others. She joined Wayscape with an interest in transmedia and creating an interactive narrative environment.
Alan Holt has been interested in writing and storytelling since the fourth grade. In 2015 Alan graduated with a MFA in Creative Writing — Fiction from the New School in New York City. In that same year Alan came on board the creative team Wayscape, leading the writing team that aims to take the crowdsourced story by storm. He is currently finishing his first novel.

Join Our Team

Wayscape is looking for designers and developers to join our team. We're building a transmedia narrative platform designed as a living story -- a body of fiction released over time with weekly updates, including puzzles and community involvement similar to an Alternate Reality Game. Our flagship storyscape is an urban horror setting inspired by the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, using a geolocative city map of Depression-era NYC.

Time commitment is expected to be 7-10 hours per week. Candidates will be paid a stipend for deliverables, with longer-term opportunities available as development continues. We have the following positions available:

GRAPHIC / UI DESIGNER

Required skills:

Experience designing user-facing web experiences
HTML / CSS and Javascript proficiency
An eye for visual design and Adobe Creative Cloud skills
UX Design and prototyping skills (InVision is a plus)

Desirable skills:

Background with digital maps
Mobile app UI experience
Illustration or character design skills

FULL STACK DEVELOPER