LudoNarraCon is well under way, with panels, demos and livestreams happening around-the-clock until May 8, and this first day at the festival was fascinating. We got to hear from some of the industry’s narrative powerhouses talking about their craft, and we managed to cram in some demo time. Here’s what we looked at.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie
The newest game by Life is Strange devs Don’t Nod is a stunningly-drawn visual novel where you have the power to see the narrative threads of the future, and your choices can shape the world around you. Taking place on a fictional island in the Mediterranean in a near-future where a single corporation has taken almost complete control of society and culture, you play as Polly, a tinkerer whose art ingenue mother has gone missing. After discovering a magical necklace that transports us to the fantasy world of Reverie where we’re known as Harmony, we have to work to uncover the secret of our mother’s disappearance and try to stop the unraveling of both our worlds. The demo features all of chapter one and does a great job of highlighting all the mechanics. Also, for PhilosophyTube fans, Abigail Thorn voices Polly’s sister, Nora! Pretty neat.
Dead Pets Unleashed
Big content warning up-front on this demo: it deals with themes of entrenched casual misogyny within a music scene, men being malicious creeps, and an implied sexual assault. If that’s not your bag, then it’s not your bag. But also, it’s an unfortunately pretty vital part of what I found to be a really true-to-life look at the punk scene and being older in creative subcultures. You play as Gordy, the 30-year-old bassist in the Dead Pets, a struggling demon punk band whose prime was arguably 10 years ago. It’s a game that combines rhythm combat with resource management as you sit in tension between Gordy’s arrested development and her bandmates all starting to drift apart into their “normal” lives. I liked this demo a lot; I’ll be checking out the full game as well.
The Invincible
This demo showed a lot of promise despite the technical issues I had while playing it on the Steam Deck. It’s a first-person sci fi-horror-adventure game set on the moon of another planet and steeped in a very stylish and colorful 1960s-era B-movie aesthetic that covers everything from the robots and vehicles to the spacesuits and even to the landscape. The way the cliffs jut out everywhere reminds me of Vasquez Rocks, a popular low-budget filming destination in California. That said, I tried everything I could to improve performance on the Deck and the game still had it roaring like a jet engine and chugging along at a kinda rough 20 frames per second. I definitely want to give this game a chance when it’s out, though.
Some of the Panels We Liked
Part of the fun of LudoNarraCon is watching the smart folks they got to talk about narrative design in games… talk about narrative design in games. From Day 1 of panels, here are a few we think you’d enjoy:
In this panel, Nathan Black, Lindsay Ishihiro and Andrew Shouldice (the latter two being writers on I Was A Teenage Exocolonist and Tunic, respectively) talk about the very different processes of writing their respective games – the challenge of making games with very little “writing” and those with LOTS of writing. It’s super neat!
This next panel was just Gareth Damian Martin (Jump Over the Age, dev of Citizen Sleeper and In Other Waters) chatting with Elliot Hudson, one of the developers on Hardspace Shipbreaker about each other’s lives, labor and how capitalism manifests in science fiction. Absolutely recommended.
Finally, in this panel, Xalavier Nelson, Jr. (every video game in the universe), Benni Hill (Luna Abyss) and Pete Bottomley (Ether One, The Occupation) talk with James Tinsdale about how to build narratively-satisfying single-player worlds. Also a really fascinating talk!
You can check out the full panel playlist here!
This article is part of No Escape‘s ongoing coverage of LudoNarraCon, a weekend celebration of narrative-driven adventure games put on by Fellow Traveller. Follow us on Twitter @noescapevg, and if you enjoy this coverage, consider supporting the site at Patreon. Find out more about LudoNarraCon here.