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Third-person narrative exploration game about empathy and emotional closure
Overview
Overview
Guiding Tails is a third-person narrative exploration game centered on empathy, loss, and emotional closure. Players take on the role of a dog searching for its owner while helping lingering spirits resolve unfinished ties, encouraging reflection and emotional engagement rather than challenge or urgency.
The project was developed by a student team under tight time and scope constraints. The design focus was on creating gentle, emotionally resonant interactions through exploration, simple puzzles, and environmental storytelling, while ensuring the experience remained approachable and cohesive across the entire team’s contributions.
Gameplay video coming soon
Role & Tools
Role & Tools
Role:
Game Designer · Level Designer · Project Manager
Tools:
• Unreal Engine
• Trello
• Discord
• Landscape tools and heightmap import
Team Size: ~9
Responsibilities:
• Led overall game design direction and narrative vision
• Designed the majority of the playable environment and level flow
• Planned and structured the core puzzle mechanics and progression
• Wrote all narrative content, including spirit backstories and dialogue
• Coordinated tasks, milestones, and priorities across the design team
• Facilitated communication between artists, programmers, and designers
• Managed development workflow using Trello and Discord
Design Focus
Design Focus
Player character designed to encourage empathy and emotional connection
Designing for Empathy & Emotional Connection
Guiding Tails was designed around the idea of helping others before achieving personal closure. Playing as a dog allowed players to engage with the world from a gentle, non-threatening perspective, encouraging emotional attachment through movement, body language, and proximity rather than dialogue-heavy exposition.
Exploration-Led Narrative Design
The game emphasizes free exploration within a bounded environment, allowing players to discover spirits and narrative moments at their own pace. Environmental landmarks and dialogue hints were used to guide players organically, avoiding explicit UI markers and preserving immersion.
Simple Mechanics Supporting Narrative
Puzzle mechanics were intentionally kept simple to ensure they supported the narrative rather than distracting from it. Each interaction focused on helping a spirit resolve an emotional conflict, prioritizing clarity and emotional payoff over mechanical complexity.
Iteration & Problem-Solving
Iteration & Problem-Solving
Reduced level scope to maintain narrative clarity and team alignment
Managing Scope Across a Large Team
One of the main challenges during development was managing scope across a relatively large student team with varying levels of availability and experience. Early plans included a larger map and multiple puzzle variations, which quickly became difficult to support within the available time and resources.
Iteration & Solution
To address this, I prioritized reducing scope while protecting the core emotional experience. The map size was scaled down, and the puzzle system was simplified to a single, well-defined interaction type. This allowed the team to focus on polish, narrative clarity, and stability rather than spreading effort across unfinished features.
Team Coordination & Workflow
Coordinating artists, programmers, and designers required clear task ownership and communication. Introducing Trello for task tracking and establishing regular check-ins helped align the team, reduce bottlenecks, and maintain forward progress despite uneven participation.
Result
These adjustments allowed the team to deliver a complete, emotionally coherent experience within the project constraints, while minimizing technical issues and unfinished content.
What I Learned
What I Learned
Balancing Leadership and Design Responsibilities
Guiding Tails taught me how to balance hands-on design work with leadership responsibilities. Managing tasks, communication, and team alignment required stepping back from individual contributions at times to ensure the project as a whole stayed on track.
The Importance of Clear Scope Definition
Working with a larger team reinforced how quickly scope can grow without clear boundaries. Actively reducing scope and focusing on a single, well-executed core experience helped the team deliver a complete and emotionally consistent game.
Designing for Emotional Clarity
This project emphasized that emotional impact often comes from clarity rather than complexity. Simple mechanics, clear narrative goals, and focused interactions proved more effective than adding additional systems that could dilute the player’s experience.
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