Game studies and LIA! host dinner featuring ENG328 student game showcase
The dinner featured playthroughs of five interactive narratives, each with a unique take on storytelling and game design.
On March 25, the faculty of the game studies program and Literature is Alive! (LIA!) held a dinner event that allowed attendees to play through five games developed by students of ENG328: Writing for Games and Narrative Design. During the event, each of the game designers gave a brief presentation on their game before allowing attendees to play through it, after which they answered questions from the audience.
The ENG328 students developed their games in the Twine 2 engine, a relatively beginner-friendly tool that doesn’t require deep coding knowledge to create interactive narratives. Most of the student developers had not coded before, and this was their first fray into game development.
The first three games were all somewhat standard visual novels, each with a unique twist. What Lies Beyond is a visual novel that explores the paths of four characters as they go on their journey through the afterlife, accompanied by a mysterious being that seems to know all about them. It featured a creatively sketch-like art style and a clever way to pick each character, with each of the opening choices of dialogue leading the player down each character’s story.
