The Lost Colony of Roanoke

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Period

Jan - May 2023

My Focus

  • Narrative game design

  • Writing for games

Type

Personal project - GameDevHub Czech

Project Links

Build of the game

Original idea video

Personal Summary

This project was my first experience using Twine, and I quickly discovered its value in planning and building branching narratives. It provided a structured way to visualize interactive storytelling, making it easier to design player choices and narrative flow.

My background in HTML and CSS proved to be a significant advantage. Since Twine uses web-based structures for organization and styling, I was able to enhance the player experience by implementing features like color-coded speaker names, background images, and music. This helped create a more immersive and polished interactive story.

Through this project, I also gained a deeper understanding of interactive narrative development and the complexities of crafting meaningful choices. Moreover, receiving feedback and iterating on the story was an important learning experience. I learned how to extract actionable insights from feedback and use them to refine and improve the narrative structure. Overall, this project strengthened both my technical and storytelling skills.

Period

Jan - May 2023

My Focus

  • Narrative game design

  • Writing for games

Type

Personal project - GameDevHub Czech

Project Links

Build of the game

Original idea video

Personal Summary

This project was my first experience using Twine, and I quickly discovered its value in planning and building branching narratives. It provided a structured way to visualize interactive storytelling, making it easier to design player choices and narrative flow.

My background in HTML and CSS proved to be a significant advantage. Since Twine uses web-based structures for organization and styling, I was able to enhance the player experience by implementing features like color-coded speaker names, background images, and music. This helped create a more immersive and polished interactive story.

Through this project, I also gained a deeper understanding of interactive narrative development and the complexities of crafting meaningful choices. Moreover, receiving feedback and iterating on the story was an important learning experience. I learned how to extract actionable insights from feedback and use them to refine and improve the narrative structure. Overall, this project strengthened both my technical and storytelling skills.

Period

Jan - May 2023

My Focus

  • Narrative game design

  • Writing for games

Type

Personal project - GameDevHub Czech

Project Links

Build of the game

Original idea video

Personal Summary

This project was my first experience using Twine, and I quickly discovered its value in planning and building branching narratives. It provided a structured way to visualize interactive storytelling, making it easier to design player choices and narrative flow.

My background in HTML and CSS proved to be a significant advantage. Since Twine uses web-based structures for organization and styling, I was able to enhance the player experience by implementing features like color-coded speaker names, background images, and music. This helped create a more immersive and polished interactive story.

Through this project, I also gained a deeper understanding of interactive narrative development and the complexities of crafting meaningful choices. Moreover, receiving feedback and iterating on the story was an important learning experience. I learned how to extract actionable insights from feedback and use them to refine and improve the narrative structure. Overall, this project strengthened both my technical and storytelling skills.

Context

This narrative-driven text game was made during a GameDevHub Czech course I took in Narrative Design (Interactive Writing). It was the final project thanks to which I successfully completed the course.

The story is heavily inspired by a real event that happened on Roanoke Island in the late 1500s. Keep in mind that this game does not cover the actual events. I tried to create an 'alternative history' and explored what could have happened on the island under different circumstances.

Throughout the course, I learned about various writing techniques and game design theories. These learnings were then applied to this game to understand their practical application. The course teacher, Jakub, guided me through the writing process and together with other course takers, he submitted regular feedback to simulate the narrative development process in a video game studio.

Process

The idea for the game came from a video made by LEMMiNO who covered the real-life events that took place on Roanoke. I found the story really intriguing and the numerous unsolved mysteries allowed me to build on top of it with my own fictional story. I still wanted the narrative to be realistic and grounded, so I utilized other historical sources to gather as much research as possible and then create a synopsis.

Final story synopsis

The next step involved establishing characters and their motivations. For that, I needed to come up with a thorough exposition that would serve as the foundation for the story. The aim was to familiarize myself with the narrative as much as possible so I could then do proper character development and plot foreshadowing.

An excerpt from the story exposition document

Description of the main character and his motivations

With the foundation for the story set, I moved over to Twine and started the planning process for narrative development and branching. I wanted to make sure that every branch of the story offers the same level of value, so players can make their own decisions instead of trying to guess what is the 'right' way to continue. Due to time constraints, I could not always follow that rule, but it is something I want to adhere to in my future narrative design as much as possible.

Investigation scene branching

Dialogue branching

Once I finished the final iteration of the narrative, I focused to other parts of the experience. I sourced copyright free music from various artists on YouTube and Epidemic Sound to create the proper atmosphere in each scene. I utilized ChatGPT to edit my writing and change some of my vocabulary to more closely resemble 16th century English. However, I also kept in mind that the text has to stay understandable for casual readers.

Original sample

After the edit in collaboration with ChatGPT

To make the game more immersive and the narrative easier to follow, I sourced some real preserved sketches and I generated some images using DALL-E. These images were used as background and are meant to look like sketches from the main character.

Real preserved sketch

Ship cabin sketch made with DALL-E

Result

Thanks to the course, I created a 15-minute text game with a branching narrative in Twine. After I passed my final exam, I continued working on the game and improved the overall experience through music, period authentic vocabulary, and background images. My ultimate goal with this course was to practice my narrative design skills, but I also hope that this game will introduce more people to the mysterious real event that happened on Roanoke.