Biswas has won four ENNIE Awards for game writing: the 2024 Silver for "Best RPG Related Product" for KOBOLD Guide to Roleplaying,[6] the 2023 Gold for "Best Family Game/Product" and "Best Rules" for Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game,[7][8] and the 2023 Judges' Spotlight Award for Moonlight on Roseville Beach: A Queer Game of Disco and Cosmic Horror.[9] In addition to Feast, Biswas won the 2019 Indie Game Developer Network "Most Innovative" award for Verdure.[5]An Elegy for the Hive Witches from The Gauntlet's Codex Zine was also nominated for the IGDN "Most Innovative Award," in 2020.[10] Biswas' game Hex Ed appeared in the anthology You and I: Roleplaying Games for Two, which was nominated for an IGDN "Most Innovative Award" in 2019.[11]
In 2020, Biswas co-designed a LARP adaptation of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance for the Museum of the Moving Image, using puppets and other props from the museum's exhibit of the show's character design.[12] In 2021, Biswas became an Artist in Residence at the Museum of the Moving Image.[13] He has continued to produce interactive installations for the museum.[14][15]
Biswas co-edited Strange Lusts, an online anthology of interactive fiction about sex and sexuality, which was published in 2021 by Strange Horizons.[20] He wrote Absolution in Brass: A Game of Guilty Steampunk Zombie-Cyborgs for Simon & Schuster's The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book.[21] He wrote an adventure in Shadow of Operations, the official one-shots book for Grant Howitt's game Spire.[22] He wrote the adventure "Who Says Witches Don't Like Chinese Food?" for the Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall scenarios book.[23] He was on the writing teams for Tanya DePass's game Into the Motherlands[24] and Green Ronin Publishing's Cthulhu Awakens.[25]
Speculative fiction
Biswas' speculative fiction has been featured in Fantasy Magazine,[26]Lightspeed (magazine),[27][28]Nightmare Magazine,[29] and Strange Horizons.[30] Charles Payseur for Locus reviewed Biswas' short story "Season of Weddings", which was published in Lightspeed: "Biswas keeps the tone and feel of the story flirty and fun, and painting an interesting picture of a shared and expansive collection of pantheons all interacting, being messy, and, for all their immortality, very human. It’s delightful!"[31] Paula Guran for Locus reviewed Biswas' story "Waiting for Jonah", which was published in Nightmare Magazine: "it’s a good story that employs an unusual use of some equally unusual fairies."[32]
Academia
As of September 2024, Biswas is an adjunct faculty member of NYU Game Center.[33] Biswas was a visiting film and media studies professor at Dartmouth College, where he co-organized a collaborative speculative fiction project between authors and Dartmouth science faculty.[34] He has also taught games studies courses at Fordham University.[35]
Biswas wrote the chapter "Sex and Game Design (Part 2): Mechanics and Verbs" in the book Passion and Play: A Guide to Designing Sexual Content in Games by Michelle Clough.[36] He wrote a 2019 article for the University of Waterloo's Games Institute about the use of live action role-playing games for building queer community.[37] He was interviewed about LARP for the academic journal Analog Game Studies.[38]
While working with Tech Kids Unlimited, Biswas collaborated with researchers and autistic students to assess the potential of video game design workshops in empowering autistic youth.[39]
Biswas was a special guest at Flame Con 2024.[42] He was a 2024 guest of honor at Ropecon.[43] He gave a talk at the 2024 Brooklyn Book Festival about games adapted from literature.[44] He gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference about portrayals of sex in video games.[45] He spoke on the game designer panel "Playing with Identity: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Queer Power Self-Definition" at Flame Con 2019, discussing the impacts of queer identity on game design and play.[46]
Biswas grew up in Abu Dhabi and originally emigrated to the United States to study bioengineering at Dartmouth College. He discovered game design while taking a "fun class" with the designer and games researcher Mary Flanagan to offset his engineering prerequisites.[55] Biswas is gay.[56]