Krista Lihvonen-Hietakallio

About Me

My professional identity is built around narrative thinking, systems, and worlds that feel alive. I am drawn to characters with depth and conflicting motivations, and environments that tell stories without relying solely on text.

My background is a combination of journalism, cultural history, game design arts and performance. I live in Finland and have a dark sense of humor, seeing patterns where others don't.

I operate at the intersection of analytical and creative thinking. I bring over twenty years of newsroom experience in finding and evaluating sources, which means the worlds I build are not only imaginative. They are internally consistent and grounded in believable logic.

I work with and without AI tools, and I know the difference between using them and outsourcing my authorship.

Currently:
Journalistic developer at Keskisuomalainen Oy.
Game design student at Xamk.

Skills

Producing - Editing - Writing - Design - Software development - 3D Modeling - Concept Art - Editorial Design - Digital Publishing - Visual Storytelling - Technical design - Languages: Finnish and English

Social Media

Tools

Unity - Visual Studio - Blender - Substance Painter - Adobe Photoshop - Procreate - Nomad - Linear - GitHub - GitLab - GitBash -Neo - Claude Code - Claude API - Twine - Figma

Experience

20 years in journalism in Finland as writer, editor, producer and daily newsroom team leader.

Currently at a media innovation team, building journalist tooling in TypeScript with Vite, Node and Docker, creating AI strategy and AI tools and gamifying journalism.

Third year game design student at Xamk, building a solo narrative RPG demo.