top of page
My Portfolio
Through my academic and personal projects, I am working to develop a strong foundation in both the creative and technical aspects of media production.
Feel free to reach out to me at meg.thurmeier@gmail.com if you have any questions, comments, or just want to chat!
The Messenger
A visual novel created in 48 hours for Northeastern University's 2025 Slice of Jam event. Contributions: Project Manager, Writer.
You are a messenger tasked with communicating between a lovestruck princess and an honorable knight. The fate of their relationship depends on how you choose to relay their messages – will you play matchmaker, or let their differences get the better of them?
You are a messenger tasked with communicating between a lovestruck princess and an honorable knight. The fate of their relationship depends on how you choose to relay their messages – will you play matchmaker, or let their differences get the better of them?
Kill the Beast
A turn-based combat game . Made for Emerson Game Development Club's Twine-a-thon Spring 2025: The Paw-some Jam, February 2025. Developed in Twine using HTML and CSS. Art illustrated in Adobe Photoshop.
Underground Sound
“Underground Sound” is a spooky, rock-and-roll-inspired endless runner game created as my introduction to coding in Godot. Largely a learning and iterative process, this project serves as a stepping stone into the exciting world of interactive media and game design.
Gameplay is fast-paced and simple, encouraging user engagement and re-playability with just the right amount of difficulty. Contributing to this design is my signature pixel art style, which is cute but brightly saturated. To ensure usability, the interface utilizes bold fonts and high contrast – so you’ll always know your high score. Dodging obstacles such as skeletons, ghosts, and eyeballs will inspire feelings of excitement, anticipation, and maybe even stardom.
Gameplay is fast-paced and simple, encouraging user engagement and re-playability with just the right amount of difficulty. Contributing to this design is my signature pixel art style, which is cute but brightly saturated. To ensure usability, the interface utilizes bold fonts and high contrast – so you’ll always know your high score. Dodging obstacles such as skeletons, ghosts, and eyeballs will inspire feelings of excitement, anticipation, and maybe even stardom.
An Untimely Expedition into Prehistoric Prairies
A piece of interactive fiction that combines text-based choices and original pixel art. Written and illustrated in October 2024. Made with Twine and Photoshop.
Freshwater
Short creative screenplay about a fish who suffers the disastrous effects of environmental destruction and pollution... and decides to take matters into his own hands. Written in August 2024.
The Dark Place as a Dream-Place
Academic paper
The Ritual: Performance and Religion in the Concerts of Metal Band Ghost
This piece is a large research project completed on April 9th, 2024 for my Research Writing class at Emerson College that showcases my ability to tackle interdisciplinary topics such religion and sociology.
The paper presents an analysis of the performances of Swedish heavy metal band Ghost. The band inverts certain theatrical or ritualistic elements traditionally seen or associated with religious practices, and then exploits and exaggerates them to make a larger critique about organized religion and society. This paper considers not only the relationship between music and religion, but also the relationship between music and the performative aspects of religion as they aid in the expression of a larger message or formation of a larger identity. To do this, I use my own personal attendance of a Ritual, a Ghost concert in August of 2023, to draw examples of how specifically Ghost uses theatrical and performative elements to convey their message. I then connect my findings to pre-existing research in the fields of psychology, sociology, and religion studies to explore the reasoning behind why these performative aspects work, calling upon theories of pseudo-religious experiences, collective effervescence, and interactive ritual. Additionally, I conclude this essay by briefly exploring the implications of these findings and what they could mean for modern religious practices, consumption of media, and the world of performance as a whole.
The paper presents an analysis of the performances of Swedish heavy metal band Ghost. The band inverts certain theatrical or ritualistic elements traditionally seen or associated with religious practices, and then exploits and exaggerates them to make a larger critique about organized religion and society. This paper considers not only the relationship between music and religion, but also the relationship between music and the performative aspects of religion as they aid in the expression of a larger message or formation of a larger identity. To do this, I use my own personal attendance of a Ritual, a Ghost concert in August of 2023, to draw examples of how specifically Ghost uses theatrical and performative elements to convey their message. I then connect my findings to pre-existing research in the fields of psychology, sociology, and religion studies to explore the reasoning behind why these performative aspects work, calling upon theories of pseudo-religious experiences, collective effervescence, and interactive ritual. Additionally, I conclude this essay by briefly exploring the implications of these findings and what they could mean for modern religious practices, consumption of media, and the world of performance as a whole.
Rise of the Living Bread
A short screenplay about zombies, diet culture, and love. Written in Fall 2023.
bottom of page