Narrative design was the challenge this week, focusing on another aspect of game design to set your gameplay apart from the masses. The spark forum post was focused on reviewing a known game with a strong narative. This helped set the scene and brought concepts to the forefront of your imagination.

Considering the innovation within this narrative outline below, I am not convinced that the actual implementation of all these features within my game prototype will significantly improve its game feel.

Renaud Forestié (Best Practices for Fast Game Design in Unity 2018) suggests that focusing on the foundation and experimenting around that, rather than going for a full featured prototype. Given the genre mix I am aiming for, and the issues flagged with my initial rounds of user testing, along with my ambition of being a V shaped designer leads me to the decision to focus on the game feel, juice and be satisfied with the outline below, until more time is available to implement it.

1. Setting

The world is similar to ours, loosely set in the pirating times, around 1700. Ships will be wind or crew powered, with no steam. The location will be fictional, not based on any real geography, mostly archipelago, to provide obstacles to navigate. The laws are primarily realistic in that there will be no laser weapons, but combat, ship speed, and weapon damage may be exaggerated to fantastic levels by ship upgrades.

2. Characters

You will play the role of a newly elected pirate captain. Every ship on the open sea is your enemy, full of booty.

3. Plot

The game opens with the death of your captain, and your election. You have no ties, and a willingness to do the best job you can. Now get to it. The tutorial will be in the form of a narrative and lead you through the gameplay elements and introduce the core game loop.

  • You: You’re a pirate.
  • Need: You need a new captain.
  • Go: You are now a captain.
  • Search: Search for ships to loot. Do pirate.
  • Find: You loot, and upgrade your ship.
  • Take: You loot too much, too long, and meet your end.
  • Return: The end is not the end; you return.
  • Change: You are back, at the start, but now stronger than before.

4. Mood

I am designing the game to be a semi-casual incremental game. When considering the four keys of emotion in player experiences (Lazzaro 2004) the most relevant for this genre would be Easy Fun, driven by immersion, and needs to awaken the sense of curiosity, incompleteness, and detail.

5. Narrative Structure

The story will begin with your captain’s death and the election of a new captain. The reason for you being a pirate will unfold through iterations and conversations with your old pirate captain. You will need to complete achievements through each main game loop iteration to unlock more story elements. As time will loop in each iteration, you will re-live the same life, retaining memories, but not skills.

6. Storytelling Techniques

The initial scenes will be dialogue, laying out the current state of affairs, and the captain’s death. Quests / Achievements will direct the player through a tutorial like series of events, and additional story segments will unlock during the death interval. The story interaction will be optional, and will not get in the way of the casual gameplay.

7. Interactivity

The story is entirely linear, with no decisions made by the player having any effect on the world. The story will unlock as the player achieves additional goals - pirate ships slain, ship upgrades purchased, the number of times the player has died.

8. Theme

Most games include the concept of eternal recurrence, but do not directly address the fact that you’re replaying the same life, over and over again. Even roguelikes, even though you die, you still play the same game. Live your life as best you can, because you might be living it over again. Perhaps a little deep for a casual incremental game.

References

  • Best Practices for fast game design in Unity [Film]. 2018. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU29QKag8a0 [accessed 6 Feb 2021].

  • LAZZARO, Nicole. 2004. ‘Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story’ 8.