About Me

View From Behind the Sofa

I’m Anika Biswas, a narrative and UX designer.

My journey into game design began in childhood—perched on a peeling brown leather sofa, just behind my brother’s shoulder, watching worlds unfold on an old TV with blurry, pixelated edges. Dragons and magic. Zombies and skeletons. Creatures of day and night. Skies forever blue, grass always green. Whether it was Skyrim or Pokémon, those imperfect screens never stopped me from getting lost in their stories. Even then, I knew I wanted to create worlds of my own.

Games have always been a way for me to step into someone else’s shoes and see the world through perspectives I might never experience otherwise. Today I design for that same feeling—spaces where players can connect, explore, and leave with something that stayed with them.

View Resume View UX Work View Narrative Work

Strength As a Designer

The work I am proudest of happened with other people in the room. These are the ways I try to show up on a team.

Design Lead At Scale

On Pawlarity I was design lead while the team scaled from 18 to 26. I kept mechanics, tutorial, and narrative decisions visible across disciplines, and tracked the work on a shared GitHub board so people knew what was next.

Playtests Drive The Next Build

I treat feedback as part of the design, not a postscript. Combat feel on Dharma of the Fallen and co-op systems on Pawlarity are organized around what players said, then what I changed because of it.

Research Before Mockups

Surveys, interviews, and competitive reads come first. The Minecraft inventory study and Chain of Jewels personas both started from what players actually reported, then the mockups followed.

Narrative Teams Can Execute

As narrative lead I hand off world, barks, and in-world artifacts that other disciplines can stage. The story has to survive contact with UI, level design, and a production calendar.

Games That Inspired Me

From quiet character studies to massive RPGs, these are the games I revisit for pacing, empathy, combat clarity, and worlds that reward curiosity. They are the shelf I borrow from when I am designing story, UX, and how players move through an experience.