The Adventure Game was a short game created for a university project that was used as an opportunity to push my narrative design skills to their limits. While it was made years ago and is a bit rough around the edges, creating it was an invaluable experience that helped me grow as a game designer.

the-adventure-game

Creating a meta narrative

The Adventure Game was an idea that I had for a while: what if the common trope of NPC's knowing they're in a game wasn't used as a horror device, but as an actual existential concept for characters in a game?

After this I decided to keep piling on tropes that I found tired and twisting them, until I had the most least generic game possible. It was a concept that was above my abilities at the time, but stretched me in all sorts of ways and made me learn things about narrative design I had never considered.

It was set up as an RPG, but had elements of different games, with different ideas floating around, a purposefully disjointed game that ran the line of being close to unplayable.

Each character had an opinion on the player, and if they were who they say they are, each character believed it was or wasn't a game for their own reasons. The player was only passing through and experiencing some of the story that the characters had been living before they came.

I wanted the player to feel apologetic for barging in, and to think before making actions. They had the opportunity to uncover 1 of 3 narratives; the main "defeat the baddie" narrative, the deeper "game is alive" narrative, or the less apparent personal narrative about someone being obsessed with a goal to the detriment of their relationships and mental health.

Listen to the Adventure Game's Soundtrack on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DjacksGames

There ended up being a lot of prototyping, and measuring designs against existing games. I had to analyse why older games used the level layouts they did, and how to play on tired tropes instead of game design techniques that are used frequently simply because they are generally accepted as good techniques.

This was also made for a university project, and recieved an A+, which was a huge encouragement going into my final year of university.

I don't count it as a failure as it helped me so much in finding my feet and discovering the narrative designer I wanted to be, but there is a lot I would change, and a lot of it that falls flat in my opinion - which makes sense, it was a deliberate risk to try and boost my skills in a trial by fire.

I enjoyed this game, and would come back to the concept if I had time. I feel like there is a few more stories I could tell with it.