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I’m James Martini (they/them), a game designer and writer from Portland, Oregon!

I'm a solo developer with a BFA in Game Design from NYU's Game Center. I have been making games for nine years and have worked professionally in the games industry for over five years, most recently as a QA tester for Major League Baseball's Gaming and VR department.

My first commercial game, BYTE released in October, 2025, and I have been building tools for my next game in Godot since.

Take a look at the featured pages here or use the nav bar to poke around as you please!

Featured Page

BYTE

To live for all eternity is hard. To love for all eternity is even harder.

BYTE is a tactics-RPG/visual novel from developer James Martini that adapts the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, examining themes of queerness, technology, desire, and more.

Wow, a new website!!

Get introduced to the new version of jamesmartini.me and learn why I left Wordpress.com in favor of making my website on my own.

I also outline the sitemap and detail what fun stuff you can find on this site!

Whale Watching Quarterly: March 2026

I <3 Games That Aren't Games

See my opinions on Harakiri, Stake Story, and why I love games that aren't games (like Death Stranding)!

Whale Watching Quarterly: January 2026

2026: The Year of Yassai Mossai 2003

Come learn about my favorite boys in the world, the Kisarazu Cats Eye!!!!!!

Also I talk about Taiko no Tatsujin,

James, now!

This is a live page that is upated periodically with what I'm up to.

This page was last updated on 5/28/26.

General Status

After just a few short weeks, I already have a new job lined up! Well technically it's just a freelance contract for my old job but we're going to count that anyway. It'll start on the first, so I'm book-maxxing before then, trying to get through as much of The Vampire Lestat as I can before the new season of the show comes out.

Additionally, I have PIGCON coming up and managed to finish by BYTE DVD-ROM package in time for it :). I'll be selling the DVDs at the convention and then trying to sell whatever's left online. Theoretically I would like to sell physically in stores as well, but we'll see how much energy I can actually devote to the project.

I'm still chugging along on my new game as well, but I'm in a constant state of wanting to refine my cutscene system as much as possible. I've recently decided that I want to embrace a "fully code-based" system that doesn't use any traditional animation timelines at all, relying essentially entirely on real-time processing and code execution to run the cutscenes correctly. I'm not quite sure how to describe my vision but hopefully I'll have the bones done soon so I can start actually making cutscenes in it.