I wrote a review already about Her Story, and that is what you should read if you are trying to decide whether to play it. But lately I’ve run into a strand of criticism of the game to the effect that the central mystery is very trope-driven and highly implausible. (Here are several: Claire Hosking, … Continue reading “Her Story, Further Reflections”
Last year I wrote about the way Gone Home is mostly backstory but doesn’t yield to thematically directed exploration. I talked then about wanting to see more games of research, pieces where the player could make guesses about where things were going and then test them out. Sam Barlow’s Her Story accomplishes that nebulously-framed wish … Continue reading “Her Story (Sam Barlow)”
Storylets encourage narrative designers to think in terms of systems, and allow story arcs to affect one another in memorable ways.
In a previous post, I wrote about design considerations for quality-based narrative systems, and mentioned that there was probably room for a standalone article about frequently-used patterns here. (This article in many ways mirrors one I wrote years ago about scene types in parser IF.) When I write for Fallen London, I find myself using and … Continue reading “Montage, Narrative Deckbuilding and Other Effects in StoryNexus”
I’ve been a fan of your site and writing since 2009. Two of your older articles have been nagging at me recently — the one about writing prose for IF, and the other about your drafting process (with examples from Metamorphoses and Bronze, respectively). I have been wondering how they would look updated for writing … Continue reading “Mailbag: Development Process for Storylet-based Interactive Fiction”
In my recent writing about storylet narrative design, I’ve talked about storylets and why they are cool how storylet systems work together how storylet systems can play nicely with gameplay, using casual games specifically as a lens I’ve also, at other times, written about how I design for pacing in Twine games and parser IF … Continue reading “Pacing Storylet Structures”
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 