"The Story of Your Life" is an experimental narrative-driven game my team and I created during the Nordic Game Jam 2017 (Copenhagen).
As the theme of the jam was "not there" we decided to work on emotions: they are there, but they are not physical. And what happens when emotions are not there anymore? Fear takes over.
As Narrative Designer, I worked closely with our visual artists and game developers to devise a simple point-and-click game which is a sad song, a caress and an attempt to represent anxiety through words and colours. In doing so, I created the characters and wrote a rhymed prose which blended harmoniously with the soundtrack.
"The Story of Your Life" is the story of a Protagonist, who doesn't have a name as he is nobody and everyone, who struggles with anxiety – a fear which is not there – and needs to find his emotions again.
As getting up is not enough to start a new day and fight his Ghost, he relies on happy memories and the caring support of his best friend, Hannah, to try and make a step out of his comfort zone.
Anxiety makes you feel like a prisoner inside your own mind and fighting it is not as simple as it might seem. Therefore, we didn't want our take-away message to be a cliché. We wanted to invite anxiety prisoners to look around for their happy memories and realize that... maybe... they are not alone.
You can play the first level of "The Story of Your Life" here.
Credits:
Game Developers
Davide Aldegheri
Henning STeinbock
Jacob Hjort Bundgaard
VISUAL ARTIST
Galaxara
Narrative Designer
Eleonora Bruttini
VOICE ACTOR
Kevin Broløs
Music Composer
Merlin Gyoery
