(Cloth Gown Not Pictured)

From 2011 to 2023, Umby Winters was a standup comedian whose style focused on telling real stories about their experiences as a nonbinary goth. They performed all over the UK, including full runs at the Edingburgh Fringe. They were runner-up or finalist in competitions such as the York New Comedian of the Year, Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year, and LGBT+ New Comedian of the Year. They even opened for the acclaimed US comedian and voice-actor Maria Bamford during the Manchester leg of her 2022 UK tour.

All of this to say; they did alright but never managed to break through into the big time. After 12 years, it was time to pack it in and find a new vocation. But they still wanted to get their money’s worth out of their most recent photoshoot.

Even though they don’t get on stage anymore, Umby’s love for writing and telling stories remains just as strong as ever. In this new life, they seek to do that through their favourite medium: video games. Umby started playing video games at age 4 with Super Mario World and Pokemon Blue, but they found a true love in horror when they played Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn in 2015. They already had a lifelong fascination with the butterly effect and chaos theory, so the revelation that video games could be used to tell a story that incorporated that philosophy was a game changer.

Umby’s preference is for character-driven narratives. Their favourite movies and episodes of TV shows are of the ‘bottle’ variety: taking place in one location so that the relationships between the characters push the plot forward, such as Circle (2015), Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Await Further Instructions (2018).

Since they went to University for an unrelated degree (TV and Broadcast Science, if you’re interested) they’re starting from the ground up. They took the ELVTR course for Writing for Video Games and graduated in June 2024 with a Certificate of Completion.

They currently work in a call center so please, please, oh God please hire them for your video game writing team. They promise their writing is better than their ability to use Squarespace.