On this last month of Trago, I would like to talk about narrative game design. But… What is this?

Narrative game design is the process of thinking about your game taking story as the main way to justify your mechanics. Of course that’s my definition about it, but when I was designing and writing Trago I take this concept very sereausly.

On the first concepts of Trago we already knew this story should use just one scenario, a street bar called Trago, located in some place of Brazil.

After all, we plan the possibilities of stories and their unfolding, trying to create a complex network of events. It is not an easy task, but we break our heads to connect facts and make the player’s choices change the course of history.

We have been able to draw interesting streams into the narrative and thus integrate elements, tasks and rewards into the game.

The tip we can give is to literally draw the whole plot of the story on a large flipchart, it is a way of perceiving the narrative holistically and over time adding necessary graphic elements in the story.

✶ We hope to have elucidated something, but if you have questions, just let us know here. Hope we can help! ✶