Reading: The Game Narrative Toolbox
I’ve been reading The Game Narrative Toolbox over the past few months as part of ongoing research into narrative design for immersive experiences. It’s an excellent book, not only outlining the role of narrative designers in game development but also providing examples, templates, and exercises to hone related skills. Although the focus is on video games specifically, I believe many principles and techniques are readily applicable to other immersive experiences.
It was written in 2015, but the topics are still relevant today. This is partly because it was co-written by several authors, all of whom have worked in the games industry as narrative designers across a variety of genres and platforms. This diverse perspective really pays off in terms of the insights and examples they’re able to offer.
Here are their LinkedIn profiles in case you’d like to follow them - I recommend you do!
- Tobias Heussner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theussner/
- Toiya Kristen Finley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toiyakristenfinley/
- Jennifer Brandes Hepler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbrandeshepler/
- Ann Lemay: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annlemay/
The Game Narrative Toolbox covers a LOT of content that I won’t even attempt to summarise in a single article. Instead, I’ll focus on three sections I found particularly useful:
Story
Implementation and Production, and
Documentation and Wireframing.
Story
Narrative design differs from traditional storytelling because of the presence of a player. Their actions determine how the story unfolds. The way a story is constructed must therefore keep the player at the center of the experience and consider their perspective. In this way, narrative design is very similar to user experience design (a topic I’ll delve into more in a future article).
Ways in which narrative design differs from traditional mediums like novels, film, or TV include:
Player as a character and their autonomy
Replay value
World-building and scale of content
Story structure
Ludo-narrative dissonance
I started writing in detail about each of these points, but the discussion grew into a whole other article which I ended up publishing earlier (see my previous article here!).
In essence, the player becomes another character in your story, one who can manipulate the direction and potentially even the ending. The nature and extent of this ability must be carefully planned by the narrative designer, whether it’s creating new paths in a branching narrative or simply offering dialogue choices that feel true to the player’s perceived character.
Once you appreciate these differences, the book goes into detail on processes and frameworks for constructing interactive narratives. Topics include:
What is a game story
Branching narratives: how player choice results in new story paths
Designing a critical path: the main storyline that all players must be able to access
Plot design: structure, story beats, and character arcs
A key takeaway is the importance of player agency and meaningful choices as per this great quote: “The consequences (of potential player choices) should always be visible.”
Players should have an idea of the weight and value of each choice. And ideally, games should provide players with a sense of satisfaction when they complete the game. They may not like the ending but the conclusion should make narrative sense and relate to the choices they made. Otherwise, players may feel disappointed, annoyed, or even cheated.
Implementation and Production
Narrative design for games is fluid! Even when you think you’ve crafted the “perfect” story, the production phase often creates real-world challenges which may require the narrative to be tweaked iteratively throughout development.
Scale of Content
It’s easy to pour effort into creating a world full of rich characters, complex backstories, lore, and history. But if your story features many decision points and branching narratives, players may never see large portions of that content - unless they replay the game, which many do, to test how their choices matter.
This is particularly challenging for indie teams, who may love the idea of an expansive world building and rewarding player interactions with carefully crafted dialogue but don’t have infinite resources to create all that content. Fortunately, there are techniques to create the perception of agency, choice, and consequence without needing extensive additional content (something I’ll cover in a future article).
Even without extensive branching, video games (especially open-world titles like the Grand Theft Auto and Skyrim series) often include vast amounts of additional content, such as NPC dialogue, journals, archival footage, or even radio stations with fictional hosts, ads and music! These details enrich world-building but come with development costs, which are easier for large studio budgets than for smaller indie studios.
What’s the takeaway for other immersive experiences? For interactive theatre, for instance, the story is often confined within a physical space. A narrative designer must consider things like:
How many rooms the experience will utilise?
How will audiences flow through the entire space?
In what order will the story unfold?
Will there be one overall story or several stories in parallel?
Will the story run once overall or will smaller stories loop?
What happens if an audience member “misses” a room and its content? Will the rest of the performance still make sense?
How will how the story accomodate and shift with audience movement and timing throughout the event?
Controlling the scale from the beginning helps refine content and ensures most of the audience encounters it.
Now What Do I Do?
One of the best quotes in the book is: “Not knowing what to do next is the single biggest sin in interactive writing.”
The writing in a game or interactive experience can be entertaining, but its ultimate purpose is to propel the story forward. Since immersive experiences rely on players or audiences doing something, it’s vital to guide them.
One way is through a précis or introduction before the experience begins, setting expectations and context. This resonates strongly with me from a user experience perspective. I constantly ask myself and the team I’m working with: “Does the user know what they’re supposed to do?” Prototyping and play testing is a great way to explore this..
Another process for guiding players is onboarding or tutorials. This can be in the form or explicit instructions, but ideally they’re woven into the narrative, with players gradually introduced to their abilities. The game Thomas Was Alone features a very simple yet elegantly designed tutorial embedded within the way the narrative unfolds.
There are clear parallels between guiding player’s actions with UX design. For example, “happy path” is a term used to describe the ideal sequence of actions to complete a specific goal. Designs are constructed that encourage the intended behaviour while minimising distraction or “wrong” actions.
For example, in a mixed reality experience, a user may overlook a virtual interactable object in the real-world environment. The experience stalls until they interact with that object, so specific cues may need to be introduced depending on the context:
The virtual object pulses visually or commences a “waiting” or “idle” animation
A faint chime is spatially located on the virtual object
An in-world character provides escalating assistance via dialogue: hint, suggestion, request, then command.
These cues can be applied on a sliding scale, starting subtly and escalating if the player doesn’t respond.
Play, Don’t Tell
In film and TV, you’ve probably heard the maxim “show, don’t tell,” encouraging storytellers to avoid heavy exposition. But in immersive experiences and games, we can go further: play, don’t tell.
In a horror film, events unfold sequentially every time you watch it. In a horror game, the player chooses when to enter a room, what to examine, and how to respond. The experience unfolds in real time, happening to them, and as a result of their actions.
Narrative Designers need to consider how to create a scenario that will elicit the intended emotion? What foreshadowing can you sprinkle in earlier to enhance a later gut punch, big reveal or plot twist?
This underscores the importance of narrative designers being involved in early playtesting. Do emotional beats land as intended? Are hints too subtle or too heavy-handed? Designers know too much about how the game is supposed to play out, so assumptions must be tested against real player reactions.
Documentation and Wireframing
On a practical note, The Game Narrative Toolbox places emphasis on documentation and wireframing as essential tools for consistent narrative design and world building.
For video games, this often takes the form of a Game Bible, documenting storylines, characters, settings, history, culture, and more.
Wireframing, meanwhile, helps narrative designers articulate story structures and critical paths using flowcharts that illustrate the relationships between events, plot beats, and game mechanics, and how these align with emotional arcs and character development. They can also be used to plan content and location for menus, tutorials, help etc.
I’m very familiar with this process from UX design, where wireframes are used to outline user flows, customer journeys, and information architecture. I’ve used tools like Figma and Adobe XD, but beginner-friendly options like Google Slides or PowerPoint can also work and allow broader team collaboration.
For more complex branching narratives with detailed dialogue, however, platforms like Twine or Ink are better suited, as they’re designed specifically for interactive storytelling.