In the first week we were assigned our roles, and I was chosen as a Narrative Designer for this project. On Thursday, we looked more closely at our roles and started working on the vertical slice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a Narrative Designer, I am in charge of everything related to the narrative, story and character interaction. It\u2019s my responsibility to make sure the plot makes sense not only to the player, but also to the development group as well, because the game we are working on relies heavily on intertwining interactions between NPCs, items and locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After doing more research on the role, here are some things I pointed out for myself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Important: the game writer is responsible for the world\u2019s story and plot<\/em> and the narrative designer is responsible for the player\u2019s experience of the story<\/em>.<\/strong> In my case, I took on both of those roles due to the fact that I was the closest one to the development of the plot, role-wise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking at previous years\u2019 projects, we haven\u2019t really gotten a grasp of what the words “vertical slice” meant as it kept being referred in different terms on different occasions. figuring it out wasn\u2019t the most fun, but naturally we realised that vertical slice is the game prototype itself<\/em>, while the description of it can also be referred as a vertical slice. With that knowledge, it was easier to think of our own vertical slice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is what we came up with: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our vertical slice includes one of the possibilities the game could develop in. The player, in a role of a child who was looking through their grandmother\u2019s old belongings, would follow an already established set of events after completing a mini-game at the start, setting the photos in the right order before submerging into the dream world. There, the player becomes a little girl called Mabel, who looks for the missing parts of her camera around the amusement park. On her adventure, she meets people who work at the park, and with their help (or by tricking them) she assembles her camera, which returns the player to the real world. Unfortunately, the photos get stained with ink, but with grandmother\u2019s comforting and guidance, the child learns how to develop new photos by completely a mini-game at the end of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have also set up a website for the project, and have added the definition of the vertical slice as well as the paragraph above it on there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n