All my life I’ve been a fierce force of imagination, persistence, and hard work: like a dragon hunting for gold. But instead of treasure, I’ve been searching for stories to tell and ways to make an impact.

Born in Belarus, I studied journalism in Bulgaria and worked in marketing in Russia, but storytelling has always been my true passion. I create narratives that allow people to explore fresh perspectives in a safe, immersive way.

As a queer, neurodivergent woman from a patriarchal country, I’m passionate about shedding light on complex topics through my work. Over the years, I’ve designed more than 100 LARP games, written 10+ original tabletop campaigns, and worked as a script supervisor on the short film Mein Name Akim (2024), which tells the story of transgender refugees in Germany.

During my MA in Serial Storytelling at IFS Cologne, I honed my skills across genres, working on solo projects as well as collaborating in Writers' Rooms.

Currently, I’m co-developing a visual novel game with a co-author as a passion project.

Now that I've completed my degree, I’m eager to bring my creativity to TV and gaming, crafting stories in both English and German.

Dragons never stop breathing fire. And neither do I, with an endless flow of ideas and stories I can’t wait to share.

Alena Lysiakova

🎧 Too much sound can ruin your audio game.

Audio designers love layering: music, background ambience, footsteps, breathing, radio static, wind, distant sirens, and emotional underscore. 

And suddenly your “immersive experience” feels like standing inside a broken washing machine. 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most people don’t play audio games in perfect silence. They’re commuting. Cooking. Walking. Folding laundry. 

Audio storytelling competes with real life. If your game requires 100% concentration at all times just to understand what’s happening, you’re designing against the format.

Cognitive overload is real:
🐲 Constant SFX + dense dialogue = fatigue
🐲 Overlapping voices = confusion
🐲 Permanent music bed = emotional flattening
🐲 No breathing room = listener burnout

Immersion doesn’t come from “more sound.” It comes from intentional sound. Silence matters. Contrast matters. Clarity matters. Design audio like oxygen.

Good audio narrative design respects the listener’s brain, because the worst experience isn’t “hard,” it’s exhausting.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames

Alena Lysiakova 🐉

Narrative designer and screenwriter ▶️ Let's create stories that make an impact

Here’s something most audio writers don’t plan for 👉 players will mishear things. 


Names. Instructions. Locations. Important clues. And no, it’s not because they’re inattentive. It’s because audio competes with real life.

If your entire branching logic collapses because someone misheard “Mara” as “Nara,” that’s not player failure. 👉 That’s architectural fragility.

Designing for mishearing means:
👾 Avoid critical distinctions that rely on similar-sounding names
🐲 Reinforce important information through variation, not repetition
👾 Use context to clarify meaning instead of assuming perfect recall
🐲 Make systems resilient to imperfect listening

In audio, clarity isn’t about simplifying the story. It’s about building redundancy intelligently. The player shouldn’t need studio-level focus to follow your game.

If your structure only works in perfect silence with perfect attention, it’s not built for the real world.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #InteractiveStorytelling

Not every choice needs to derail the plot. 👾 


But every choice should change the experience.

In audio games especially, meaningful choices aren’t always about branching into entirely new storylines. They’re about shaping how the story feels to the player.

Good choices can:
🐲 Shift tone (kind, cautious, reckless, ruthless)
🐲 Redefine relationships and trust
🐲 Change how the player sees themselves in the story
🐲 Unlock bonus lore or small secrets that reward attention

One of my favorite design approaches is building narrative branches as journeys between fixed plot points. The destination stays the same, but the path there changes who you are when you arrive. The agency lives in letting the player leave their fingerprints all over it.

👉 If a choice makes the player think, “This felt like me,” then it worked, even if the plot stayed exactly where it was.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #GameWriting

Dating used to be awkward dinners and nervous eye contact… now it’s co-op bosses and shared loot drops. 🎮💘

In my latest article, I dig into why playing together is becoming the new dating, and how games are quietly reshaping connection, chemistry, and even heartbreak.

👉 https://lnkd.in/eU6XgMn8

If you’re into storytelling, relationships, or just fascinated by how games intersect with real life feelings, this one might hit a nerve.

#GamingCulture #Storytelling

Open article: Why playing together is the new dating by meer.com

The uncomfortable truth about writing for audio: sometimes experience gets in the way. 🐲 


I coach a lot of writers transitioning into interactive audio, and I keep seeing the same pattern: the more experienced the writer, the harder it can be to adapt.

Not because they’re not talented, but because they’re used to controlling the frame.

In audio, you don’t have visuals to lean on. You don’t have text people can reread. You don’t have cinematic shortcuts.

You have a voice. Timing. Space. Silence. Choice phrasing. Cognitive load.

And if you try to force screenwriting logic or prose logic onto audio without adjusting, the story simply doesn’t breathe. 

💡 Audio is a different architecture. It demands different pacing, different exposition control and different emotional calibration.

That’s why transitioning with a coach helps. Not because you don’t know how to write, but because someone needs to point out the invisible friction early.

You can read all the documents you want. Clarity usually comes when someone listens and says, “This works. This doesn’t. And here’s why, specifically for audio.”

Different medium requires different muscles. And once they click, audio becomes addictive.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #StoryCoaching

In visual games, players always know where they are. There’s a map, a UI, and a quest log. Basically, something grounding them.

In audio there is nothing like that. Which means if you don’t deliberately build structural anchors, your story starts to drift.

Structural anchors are recurring elements that help listeners orient themselves without realizing it.

It could be:
🐲 A specific location you return to
🐲 A character who always reappears between major beats
🐲 A ritual moment (a radio check-in, a diary entry, a nightly call)
🐲 A recurring sound cue that signals transition

These anchors are architecture. Without them, scenes blur. Branches feel random. The player doesn’t feel lost because the plot is confusing; they feel lost because there’s no spatial or emotional reference point. Audio needs repetition with intention.

When players hear that familiar voice, that recurring space, that structural checkpoint, their brain relaxes. Orientation returns. Engagement stabilizes.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames

Choices without context aren’t suspenseful. 💀 


They’re just guesses.

🐲 When a player is asked to make a decision, they need enough information to imagine possible outcomes, not the exact result, but the shape of the risk.

Take this:
“Should he hide or confront the burglar?”
That’s not a meaningful choice. It’s a coin toss.

Now compare it to:
“Hiding is probably the safer choice, but what if he can stop the thief right now? Should he hide or confront the burglar?”

Same options. Completely different experience.

💡 The second version gives the player something to weigh: safety vs. action, fear vs. responsibility, risk now vs. regret later.

Good narrative design isn’t about revealing consequences. It’s about framing decisions so the player can reason emotionally, not randomly.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #GameWriting

I’ll be attending Series Mania Forum on March 24 to 26.


Do you want to talk series and verticals? 🎬  
🐲 Let's meet and talk over coffee in Lille. 

#SeriesMania #VerticalSeries #Networking

Tony Fiston 🥑

Double Leads & Triple Sales | Digital Marketing Consultant & Services for Sustainable D2C Businesses

If you want:

• clients who align with your mission
• simple systems that create clarity, not chaos
• reporting that connects effort to revenue
• growth that does not keep you up at night

We are aligned.

How we work:

1. Find your people
Not the algorithm’s fantasy. Not vague lookalikes. Real humans who already need what you offer.

2. Build trust
Not through pressure. Through strategy that feels useful, relevant, and human.

3. Grow without guilt
Clean data. Clean inputs. Clean profits. No surprises.

What you get when we work together:

• clarity on what is working and what is draining your budget
• tools that anticipate demand, like a weather forecast for sales
• transparent pricing with no last minute surprises
• strategy that respects your intelligence and your values

Recent wins:

• helped a global, mission driven consumer platform build a consistent 1 million monthly organic impressions on Instagram through repeatable content systems
• helped a recycled materials brand land a Fortune 500 client through a single narrative
• increased repeat sales by 200 percent for a plant based supplier by turning customer stories into ads
• transformed climate tech reports into lead assets generating 85 qualified conversations

How we operate:

🔍 full transparency. you always see the work
🛑 no smoke and mirrors. if it cannot be explained simply, it does not ship
❤️ aligned incentives. we grow when you grow

Conversations I enjoy:

• why your best customers would miss you if you disappeared
• how trust becomes your strongest growth channel
• where hidden profit already exists in your current pipeline

If you are building something meaningful, you will feel at home here.

www.fisagency.com

Prompt Engineer

I have been creating and applying inventive approaches in prompt engineering to tackle intricate marketing challenges within natural language processing (NLP) and AI applications.

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