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Narrative Design Projects 

Text-Based Narrative Game

Student project: Rapid Prototyping Unit (PG, Term 1)
Duration: 2 weeks

Project Type: Individual

Constraint:

  • Theme - Theme or message of your choosing

  • Time - 2 Weeks

Project Brief:

A Narrative game of our design and theme of choice was to be designed and presented at a bi-weekly playtest. The Game had to have a core focus on Narrative Design, all visuals and software selection were optional. The use of Text-based software like Twine was encouraged for faster prototyping.

Summary:

The game is a short Text-based adaptation of what life must be like as a Dementia patient. The visual references and personal accounts provided in the Video mentioned above served as the main inspiration for the game. The Story starts the payer off with limited context and forces them to gather information by exploring their surroundings and finding hints their character would have left for themselves as a patient of Dementia. 

Process: 

  • Adaptation

The first challenge to overcome was to adapt the 2-minute-long informational video to roughly 10 minutes of gameplay. The main focus of the video was to inform people of the day-to-day struggles of patients diagnosed with Dementia and how they aren't helpless, instead,d they find their unique ways of functioning in their day-to-day lives. The visual cues and signs the patient uses in the videos to aid in his everyday activities and problems highlighted by him served as the base for all the tasks and challenges the narrative for the game was designed around. 

  • Pacing and Structure

The structure of the game was based on how many activities the player had to do in each room, in what order, and how many clues they had. Some activities were designed to send them in a loop as they were genuine scenarios patients sometimes find themselves in. The structure of the story allowed the player's actions to compound over multiple days as some mistakes made on day 1 would affect their actions available on days 2 and 3 unless corrected by the player. 

  • Player Experience

​The patient in the video mentions that the biggest challenge he faced of the abundance of options and the lack of direction thereof. The solution for this was to focus and take a moment to remember what he intended to do instead of rushing into things and being lost or going down random rabbit holes without realizing it. This served as the Key Pillar for the player's experience in the form of the Focus mechanic, which would present the players with an overwhelming number of options on entering any room but would take away all of them and reveal the most relevant one if they chose the focus option and chose to take a breath and calm down. This in contrast to the looping options and multiple choices provided two contrasting aspects of a Dementia patient's life. 

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Take Aways: 

  • Adapting a story across visual mediums

  • Strictly text-based Narrative Design

  • Working with limited visual ques to craft a Narrative Experience 

Game Book

 Game Book

Student project: Semester End (UG Year 1, Sem 1)
Duration: 2 months

Project Type: Individual

Constraint:

  • Theme - Barbarian, Hack & slash, Distant Star (Story should incorporate all 3)

  • Software - Hyperlinked PDF

  • Length - 12000 Words Minimum 

  • Time - 2 Months

Project Brief:

A gamebook (Choose Your Own Adventure Book) was to be pitched, designed, and written which satisfied a few structural requirements. During this period, various playtests and lectures related to Narrative Design and Structure of Stories took place. Regular playtests of other game books and of structural prototypes of our own took place to discover flaws and test the critical path designed. 

Summary:

The game starts when Matu our protagonist arrives on planet Mogo to complete the task given to him by his father. Matu navigates through the dense forest-covered planet finding his way to the Komoda clan's lair to execute the sinister-natured task he was burdened with. On his way, he encounters many enemies some of them are wild creatures and others are tamed monsters whom he presumes to be working for the one he is supposed to kill. Being kind as he was the player has an option to either kill an enemy after defeating him or letting him live. The ‘kill count’ will increase every time a player decides to kill an enemy and follow the barbaric ways of his clan hence becoming the barbarian his father wants him to be.
                 As the player reaches the end of the story he is attacked by a group of monsters and knocked unconscious, he wakes up in the village he was trying to find between the people whose leader he was sent to kill. The Komoda clan members found and rescued Matu and accepted him as a part of the clan. On hearing this his father comes to Mogo to handle the matter himself.

Process: 

  • Major Plot Points and Constraints

The initial part of the assignment involved pitching the game idea to the Instructor in charge of the project and justifying the appropriate usage of the Thematic constraints in your story while also having enough gameplay and choice options for players. 

  • Pacing and Structure

After the plot points were decided the structure needed to be finalized around them. The pacing, major story beats, and action bubbles needed to be finalized so that the writing style of each section can match the desired tone at that point of the story

  • Prototyping & Testing

A prototype of the book was made at this phase of the project which was based on the structure determined in the last step. The Prototype included one-line descriptions of the contents of the page and hyperlinked options to test the different paths and visualize the potential journey to inspire the writing. Notes were taken with each playthrough to inspire page-specific events and dialogues 

  • Writing

Using the notes and knowledge from the previous step the Writing phase finally began. It was then a long 1 Month journey of writing every day chipping away bit by bit at the story.

  • Revision & Playtests

The Last step involved playing and reading through the book multiple times to spot any flaws, errors, or potential improvements in the story, dialogue, Combat or otherwise.   

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Take Aways: 

  • The basics of Storywriting Lectures 

  • Narrative Design Lectures

  • First time writing a book

  • Understanding of a new Genre/Platform of games

Visual Novel

Visual Novel

Student project: Year End (UG Year 1, Sem 2)
Duration: 3 months

Project Type: Team (4 Designers, 1 Artist)

Role and Key Responsibilities:

  • Project Manager

    • ​Plan Timelines according to Milestones and Project requirements

    • Scope out the project to assign roles and tasks amongst teammates based on their strengths and preferences

    • Follow up with teammates regarding tasks and updates

    • Keep project documents up to date 

    • Update the instructors in charge of our progress and plans  

  • Story and Dialogue Write

    • As the person whose story was voted in by the team, I was the Vision Holder of the story

    • Multiple revisions to take the team's feedback and suggestions into account

    • Story and Script for the game written 

    • Revisions without changing the structure as the development started

    • Establishing the World and Theme of the story for artists 

    • Character Descriptions

  • Game Director

    • ​As the Writer of the story and script I was responsible for sitting with the artists and explaining my vision

    • Each frame of the story was discussed with an artist and storyboarded

    • At the time of art integration, director notes were added along with each art frame which added camera movement details, pauses, and interactions taking place on that page 

Constraint:

  • Theme: ​

    • You’re with an inquisitive hangman at a dark alley behind a respected establishment, leading into a warren of twisting streets and dark corners. Situation: A flash flood sweeping through a refugee camp site.

    • Night Ghost Corpse

  • Software - Tyrano builder - Visual Novel Studio

  • Length - 20 Minutes of Gameplay 

  • Time - 3 Months

Project Brief:

A Visual novel was to be made that satisfied the randomly generated thematic constraints assigned to each team. The whole project was to be managed by a team-elected PM and made in a span of 4 months with regular milestones every 2 weeks. The project was to be made on tyrano builder alone and should have about 20 minutes of gameplay.

Summary:

You play as a therapist set in 1880s London, practicing at a mental asylum, your sister Elsa and nephew Aaron being the only family you had left. Being a single mother it wasn’t easy for your sister to raise your nephew and after observing Aaron getting involved in weird incidents around the neighborhood and acting different around the house, she calls you over to check on him. You rush to their place and discover another too out of the ordinary for a young kid, except he seems to have this calmness about him which sends a shiver down your spine as if something was broken inside him now. You take him with you to your quarters in the Asylum you work in to keep him under your observation and start seeing improvements. All seems to be going well when suddenly strange incidents start happening around the asylum, the game progresses with you using dialogue to pick up context clues from conversations with your patients as you do your daily checkups and go about your day as you start piecing the puzzle together. The game has multiple endings based on your choices made and your approach to the problems encountered in the game. 

Process: 

  • Story Pitch

The randomly selected teams sat together and started discussing the theme and how we could interpret it. After finalizing the few acceptable and undisputable ways the theme can be inferred each team member wrote a short story pitch based on the now more focused theme.   

  • Voting and Role Assignment

After hearing each member's pitch and ideas the team voted and picked the story they liked the most. The person whose story got selected was predetermined by us to be the director and writer of the project which ended up being me. The project manager was also voted in at this stage which I volunteered for as I had experience with previous projects and would have a very supervisory role once the story was written and production started anyway. 

  • Story Structure and Gameplay

Once the team was happy with the story I divided it into major plot points and added branches to the story to have a diverging and converging structure to the game, giving the player's dialogue and action choices meaning by having lasting effects without increasing the scope of the project. The Gameplay and Story documents were then divided amongst the team to start production as I worked on refining the dialogues and narration scripts.   

  • Production

The team had their roles to fill and since mine was more pre-production heavy my priority during production shifted to Directorial and Project management tasks. The idea was to keep everyone doubt free and on track for submission. 

  • Playtest and Polish

The Last few weeks of productions were all about playing what we have and making it better in any way possible. Notice any problems or shortcomings, take feedback and observe playtest sessions to recognize player patterns and behavior, and try to incorporate it into the game if needed.  

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Take Aways: 

  • Scriptwriting and storyboarding process 

  • First Game Direction experiences

  • Project Management experience

  • Narrative Design Lectures and experience

Other Projects

Get in Touch

yashjuthani@gmail.com

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