Strangened Narratives

These are the entire lessons used for my course on Experimental Narratives which I ran from 2022 to 2024. 

This advanced course will focus on experimental, weird, absurd, and stand-alone narrative design. This course doesn’t care about current game design traditions. This course is about the stuff that I like. This course is going to be wild.

The first lesson is free if you want to see what's the whole package like. Course used Ink by Inkle for any script examples.

About the author:

Evgeni "Zhenia" Puzankov is an award-winning narrative designer with 16+ years of experience. I have also taught game writing and narrative design for 6 years in various capacities. I have an MA from Cologne Game Lab with a thesis on Absurd Games. I’m also a solo developer working on strange, absurd, and political games.

Highlights include: Save Koch, Song of Farca, The Long Reach, Baby Labor, Duck Date, Bomber Looks Down, and Ahanar. 

What's inside:

"This course is aimed at narrative designers and game writers who have some experience working in games but not experimenting with the medium. 

The course is genre-agnostic. We’re not focusing on any specific interactive tradition here.

IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE SPACES

Othertopias, anti-agency, locked choices, unreliable choices

LOOPS, GROWTH, DECAY

Cyclical and spiral structures, anti-power fantasy, embracing decay

PLAYER AS A DESIGN ELEMENT

Player control and manipulation.

EDITING TO THE END

Using pacing, structures, interactivity, etc. to cause emotions and make your point

I will not respond to the assignments, buying this whole package doesn't include me giving you any feedback.

If you intend to use this material for education purposes, leave a comment and we'll find a way to get in touch.