Narrative Machine

01/30/2026

After almost 4 years of development, Natural Allies is now available on Steam!

Natural Allies is a 2D platform game inspired by the 8-bit era. Team up with a variety of animal buddies to stop an ancient evil from taking over! Explore 25 stages across 6 worlds, and test your skill against fearsome foes! Discover the true ending by collecting the hidden Spectral Stars.

08/02/2023

Last summer, I began a fairly ambitious interactive project, and have been pretty quiet about it on online. While still in development, it's now ready to be shared!

Introducing "Natural Allies," a 2-d platform game inspired by some of my favorite 8-bit classics!

The player controls a character named Cado, who teams up with several animal buddies. Together, they are trying to stop a corruption from spreading through the natural world.

At launch, the game will have 30 levels (24 normal stages and 6 bosses). It will initially be available on PC, and I'm looking into the possibility of both an Xbox and Switch release.

Stay tuned for more updates!

03/30/2023

Android users! I've updated my legacy apps for the first time in a long while. To celebrate, the ad-free versions of Missile Defense Force and Base Invaders are now 100% free to download! PachinkOwl and Seagulls will also be free through April 5th, 2023 (and $0.99 after that). Links below!

PachinkOwl: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.narrativemachine.pachinkowl

Seagulls: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.narrativemachine.seagullscantfly

MDF: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.narrativemachine.missiledefenseforce

Base Invaders: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.narrativemachine.baseinvaders

01/21/2022

A new interactive piece to kick off 2022:

An interactive art piece by Jacob Pierzchala

08/04/2021

https://narrativemachine.com/interactive/vanishingpoint/index.html

Vanishing Point was the first major project I began working on in 2010, during my first semester at BGSU. While it doesn’t meet the level of refinement I aim for today, it remains significant to me for exploring themes that would become central to later work: the clashing of perspectives, mortality, and futurology.

Originally developed in Flash, the piece tells a story of a reconstructed human and his confrontation with a mechanical overlord, from multiple points of view. The 2021 reworking replaces full form poetry with animated typography, to subtly guide the viewer through the events that unfold.

07/01/2021

Over the past few months I’ve been working on a series of disk designs, inspired by the work of HYBYCOZO, Cocorrina & Co, and Carol Prusa. The first 3 of these are loosely based on sacred geometric patterns. While the core designs have been finalized, I am exploring how to translate these into both interactive and physical media.

The first set of images are screen-captures of an interactive experiment, which can be viewed at: https://narrativemachine.com/sandbox/disks/disk-series-sg-test.html. The photos that follow show prototypes fabricated from Baltic Birch. A very special thank you to Erwin Redl and Michael Kratochvil for helping to produce these!

© 2021 Jacob Pierzchala

04/25/2021