Building My Narrative Game

From Framing to Gamestorming: Building My Narrative Game

When I tried gamestorming, I surprised myself with how many ideas I could throw out in a short amount of time. The real progress came when I refined them and looked for connections to my learning goals. The “What If” scenarios helped me think creatively, and idea trees gave me space to expand on one idea in different directions. The idea cards didn’t work as well for me since the random words felt scattered. If I did it again, I’d spend more time refining instead of just filling a page.

Playing narrative games in the first week showed me that story and emotion can be more powerful than mechanics. Spent made me think about tough real-world choices, Gods Will Be Watching kept me on edge with survival decisions, and my mentor game Duru blended story and learning in a way that felt meaningful. That balance is what I want to capture in my own design.

For my framing, I chose my robotics students as the audience. The subject is basic robotics, and my learning objective is that students will be able to identify the function of the chassis, drive train, and front wheel assembly with at least 80% accuracy. I picked this because students often struggle to remember what each part does when building or troubleshooting.

The story idea I landed on takes place in a robotics workshop. The team’s robot breaks down right before a big event, and the player, a new team member, has to explore the workshop, talk to teammates, and figure out how to fix it. The goal is to get the robot running again in time. I want players to feel both the urgency of the deadline and the pride of solving the problem. To support this, I see resource and tactical decisions playing an important role since players will need to choose where to focus their time and attention.

Framing gave me direction, and gamestorming gave me choices. Pulling the two together helped me shape a story that feels both engaging and educational.