Egregore

About the Project

Egregore is a first-person adventure game set in modern-day Cairo — my MFA thesis completed at the University of Southern California in 2024. Inspired by classic adventure games like Myst, it innovates on the genre with a novel graph-based mechanic that lets players reshape their understanding of the world by changing how they perceive information.

I created this game to let players explore the vibrant streets of contemporary Cairo in ways never before possible, weaving together paranoia, mystery, and cultural depth.

My Role

As Creative Director, I led the game's creative vision and supervised the following areas:

• Narrative design, worldbuilding, and dialogue systems
• Game mechanics and systems design — including the core graph-based perception mechanic
• Level design and environmental storytelling
• Team management and production coordination across a 20-person development team

Highlights

• Led a development team of 20+ students across design, art, engineering, and audio
• Original soundtrack composed by USC Thornton School of Music students
• Selected for USC's prestigious "Advanced Games Program"
• Featured at the 2024 Game Devs of Color Expo and USC Games Expo