Hellirrelevant
Original concepts, imagery, and written content © Rohil Aniruth & Thribing Games, 2020–2026. All rights reserved.
Illustrations by Tineyy Arts, property of Rohil Aniruth & Thribing Games.
It Started As A Game Called “Irrelevant”…
About:
Irrelevant was a branching narrative “influencer culture” satire prototype for Android and Google Play.
Demon Lord Meglocks offers your squad fame and fortune if you provide him with souls and a hefty % of that sweet, sweet brand-deal cash. Your influencer crew is faced with choices that will either boost their clout, or see them fall into “irrelevance.” Should you have a boxing match with a rival influencer? Maybe drop a merch line? Rap battle a mainstream celeb? Flex your pet T-Rex?
Each member of your team has stats that give them an edge in certain scenarios, and it’s up to you to manage their personalities and maximize followers.
Made in collaboration with Jose Deschamps (Niantic’s Pokémon GO).
My Role:
Ideation of core mechanics.
Conceive and write the game’s stories, characters & events.
Plotting/mapping and maintaining a branching narrative. (Player choices change the story path.)
Writing game dialogue & flavor text.
Art direction.
Illustrate all of the game’s art.
Irrelevant was the project that first attracted the attention of Simple Machine, the studio where I’d land a position as Narrative Designer in 2018-2020. My work on this branching narrative game prepared me to take on development of Infinite Jonathans.
Irrelevant has been reworked and is currently in development as Hellirrelevant
Think: If Fear & Hunger meets The Devil Wears Prada…
About:
The story now follows four creatives within the intersection of art, streetwear, and high fashion going through the grueling interview process to become the next creative director of Hell, yes, Hell, like eternal damnation Hell, looking for a desperate rebrand to become the cool, edgy realm again.
Which of the candidates will have the right vision and be the right culture fit to bring Hell back from obscurity?
The project still satirizes influencer culture, but expands on it a bit further to include the fine art world and even academia.
The game art references and parodies major fashion and creative brands and is a more conscious critique of capitalism, and exploration of power dynamics and freedom of identity/self-actualization.
My Role:
Ideation of core mechanics.
Conceive and write the game’s stories, characters & events.
Plotting/mapping and maintaining a branching narrative.
Writing game dialogue & flavor text.
Art direction, character design.
Main Cast: Cheeky Opulence and Yushi Hang
Cheeky presents as a nepo baby without the famous folks. He’s a rich-douche to an audience, someone who fully lost touch with the everyday realities of people the further his career progressed monetarily. Though if you catch him one-on-one, he displays a great deal of empathy, and preoccupation with spreading a realistic hopefulness.
Despite his propensity for rubbing some people the wrong way, in particular Gen Z artists, a lot of people find him oddly charming, and he’s known for a hard-to-stay-mad-at sense of humor. Cheeky got his start in furniture design, then built a profile doing the interior decor of various celebrities before creating a stir in the fashion world, quickly overcoming the Rick Owens rip-off accusations.
Cheeky shares his battles with body dysmorphia with a sick sense of glee, as if fascinated by his own discomfort. Upon revisiting his early writing, I’ve found that a lot of his journey fits quite unintentionally as satire of the “lookmaxxing” mess that gained mainstream exposure in 2025.
From all the candidates gunning for the creative director title, he is the only one who doesn’t need the gig, already having strong institutional backing and maintaining strong relevance off his own name. There might be some ulterior motives for his presence in Hell…
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Yushi is on the opposite end of the creative world. She is an up-and-coming creative director currently in her blow-up era. There are a lot of eyes and hype around her, becoming a people’s champion of sorts for her unfiltered approach to questioning authority through her art and social media presence, and highly considered, unique fashion sense.
She got her start finessing her way into media junkets and press rooms and doing comedically antagonistic interviews with celebrities. Yushi leveraged her online following and budding presence as a fashion icon to open up her own thrift store and subsequent affordable fashion label FONTONTHING with her co-founder Hamal. The brand currently has Gen Z in a chokehold.
While things are popping off for Yushi, larger establishment brands find her risky to work with, she’s too volatile and politically steadfast. She’s also engaged in offensive humor categorized as “dirtbag left,” and is criticized by some for leaning too heavily into sexual imagery. Hell might be the perfect fit for her sensibilities, but even then, many consider her too green to hold the role of creative director of a major brand. In this story, she is an underdog, and her ideals will be tested.
Various Enemies, Environments, Items
