Project Overview

Team Size: 22 (16 full time, 6 part time)

Development Time: September 2019 - May 2020

Platform: PC

Role: Narrative Designer / Marketing Assistance

Responsibilities

Develop a core story arc for the player to follow
Develop exposition for the game's world/characters
Communicate with product owner and team to ensure the narrative fits with the game's scope/vision
Thoughtfully document all work in a clear manor
Help design environmental interactions (animals/plants)
Write posts for social media
Gather content for social media posts (gifs/images/video)

Gameplay showing the player finding a hidden totem

Project Descrition

In Eira: Echoes of Adventure the player explores an alien planet while attempting to find their missing grandfather. The player does this by using the Galactavac, a device that allows them to vacuum up resources. They can then use these resources to either rebuild ancient structures or terraform the environment. This allows for interesting problem solving as the player must determine the most efficient way to navigate the world.

Role

I was the primary narrative designer for this project. It was my job to Design and implement a core narrative arc and exposition for the games world and characters. While doing this I worked closely with the team's product owner, level designers and artists to make sure my design fit with the game's overall vision

Once this high level narrative was decided on, it was my job to further flesh it out and determine how it corresponded to the game world. I began by developing the backstories and motivations of Eira and Egil. There were various questions about them that needed answering. How did someone young like Eira get a hold of such advanced treasure hunting gear? If Egil was such a great treasure hunter then how did he disappear? What was Eira and Egil's relationship? I spent time coming up with as many of these question as possible about plot inconsistencies and putting the plot in front of others to get their questions.

Narrative Arc / Exposition

One of my earliest tasks was to establish a narrative arc for the player to follow and an in depth exposition of the game world. To do this I fist consulted the full team and product owner to determine the high level plot. We decided that we wanted the player to be an adventurer exploring a foreign world in search of their missing grandfather. Once that was decided we then scaled down to a smaller narrative task force. This task force consisted of myself, Nick Deluzio (another designer) and Anderson Pinkney (the product owner). Together we fleshed out various high level narrative details, such as core narrative events and basic character bios. We decided that our main character would be Eira, a young treasure hunter looking to prove themselves. Her grandfather would be Egil, an expert treasure hunter who mysteriously disappeared telling no one where he was going.

A model used to show the game's dramatic tension over time

World

As a team we had decided that our world would be an icy tundra with limited greenery and ruins scattering the surface. Our artists and level designers liked the concept of an ancient civilization leaving behind dilapidated ruins. As such it was my responsibility to flesh out the history of these ruins and develop the civilization that used to inhabit them.

One of my goals was to connect the exposition of the world with Eira's journey. Our space to deliver narrative to the player is limited. As such I wanted to make it so the more the player learns about the planet, the more they learn about Eira's journey and vice versa. To do this I decided to make the ancient civilization of the world a early version of Eira's tribe. Because of this discoveries about the world and discoveries of Eira's backstory often overlap forming one fluid experience.

Pacing out when information would be given to the player was vital so they would not be overwhelmed and remain curious to learn more. I worked with level designers and artists to determine when certain assets would give exposition to the game world. These assets are placed sparingly early in the game but are used more and more as as it progresses. Ultimately the full story of the game would not be told until the game was finished and all of the main collectables were collected.

Gameplay showing the player repairing an elevator

Interactions

I was responsible for creating narrative interactions in the world space. As as team we had decided that we wanted the bulk of our narrative/exposition to be told in world though items/areas that the player could find and interact with. This decision was made to adapt to our younger audience that would not not understand a complex plot. This way younger players can enjoy a simple experience while older players have a more complex narrative that they can choice to explore.

The first step in the process of creating these interactions was to design a system to present these interactions to the player. Initially I designed a system where upon interacting with a object the player would be frozen and text would appear at the bottom of the screen that the player could click though. I presented this system to my team's other designers and after deliberation it was decided that the proposed system did not fit with the current gameplay. The main issues were that the the on screen text would break immersion and the freezing of the player would break the pace of the game. Together with the other designer's and product owner we constructed a new system. In this system text would be displayed in world space above the intractable object with the player having full control of their movement.

Once this system was decided on I began working to plan out all necessary interactions for each level. Working with the level designers we determined where interactions could fit best in the world. Together we mapped out all the items that would have interactions then determined what information each interaction would give to the player. I then took this information and transformed it into dialog that would be presented during the interaction.

Marketing

Towards the end of development we ran into a serious impediment of having to adapt to remote work as the COVID - 19 pandemic had begun. Due to an immovable deadline many things had to be cut from the game including a large portion of the narrative. As such there was almost no narrative design work left for me to do. Because of this I moved over to the marketing department where I specialized in Twitter content creation and writing.

It was my job to go into the engine and build to capture gifs, images and video that would help to make potential players interested in our game. Each week I would be given a list of features that would be shown off and it was my job to gather content that displayed them accurately in a way that would be interesting to potential users. After a couple weeks of doing this our pipeline was restructured. The prompts that I was given were more broad and was given the freedom to choice the features I would show off (provided they fit with the prompt). In addition it was now my responsibility to write posts that would run with the content.

Reflecting

This project was the first time a major chunk of my work had been cut. Due to impediments and vision changes the narrative interaction system was cut and with it a large portion of the narrative I had developed. While I've had some content cut in the past this was the first time it has happened on this scale. Overall I believe I handled this situation in the correct way. I understood why the content was being cut and was willing to make that sacrifice. My main focus was on making a game of the highest quality and if that meant my work had to be scrapped then I was OK with that.