Reflection on Narrative Design Process
Several years ago, I completed a master's in digital communications, and one of my favorite classes in the program was video storytelling. The experience of this class led to years of crafting, editing, and producing various visual narratives, primarily for schools, along with teaching the production process to K-12 students.
In the production process, I discover and learn the beautiful nuances of stories, and as the story guides and unfolds, I listen and work creatively to put the pieces together. Gamestorming and designing a story for the learning process felt similar. Once I could see the characters, antagonists, and conflicts in my head, I let the story guide and unfold. As a visual-spatial learner, I think in images and visual patterns rather than words or sequential steps. Here are a couple of visuals of how my brain works: 🤪
Garden Heroes is my first game-storming experience. When I'm in school/taking a class, my creativity is reserved. The objectives, the grades, all the things create some anxiety and panic in me that I don't typically feel in my creative role as a learning experience designer. This anxiety is most likely a reflection of my schooling experience growing up, along with my personality. However, in this design process, I tried to use what I've learned in my profession to guide my thinking. For example, my original thinking of having students see themselves as heroes of their journey did not waver as I changed subjects. As I continue to write the story, I can see the students in my school in my head, picturing the decisions they must make when planting a garden. This visual has helped define some of the information they need to know in our learning environment, as well as what I know would interest them. Empathy has played a key role for me in this game design.
I'm not sure what I would change about my process at this point. One thought I had would be to draw it out first or even use index cards. I used Freeform to organize my ideas, which worked well for me, but I wonder if I use a more "hands-on" initial brainstorm would elevate my thinking.
Short Story Narrative
The story begins by introducing the player to the abandoned community pollinator garden. This garden, once vibrant and full of life, is now overgrown with weeds, and there are no signs of pollinators. The player, as a garden design hero, is tasked by the Builders of Tomorrow, a secret society committed to saving this community from environmental meltdown, to revamp the pollinator garden for the community to flourish. The garden design hero, once committed to the journey, meets their mentor, Lady, a beautiful Monarch butterfly who offers insights and information about gardening throughout the game. The central conflict centers around restoring the garden in a way that supports pollinators, such as birds, bees, and butterflies. By creating a thriving pollinator garden, the community also thrives. However, always hovering nearby is the antagonist, Barren Beast, a character who embodies garden challenges such as pests, invasive weeds, and the general upkeep of a garden. He caused the garden to be barren in the first place and wants to keep it that way. The garden design hero faces both trade/off (choice of native/non-native plants) and risk/reward challenges (pesticides vs not) throughout the journey to revive the garden. At various points throughout the journey, the Barren Beast presents challenges such as invasive weeds, drought, or lack of commitment to the garden that the garden design hero must face. Depending on what the garden design hero chooses impacts the outcome of how thriving the garden will be. The climax is the Barren Beast’s biggest challenge: drought. The story ends with (based on choices throughout the game) either a thriving garden or a struggling garden.
Garden Design Heroes is the title of the game. I chose this title because the goal of the game is to design a garden, but more than that, I wanted the players, students in grades 3-5 to see themselves as heroes.
Gardening is an integral part of the learning environment where I work as a learning experience designer. There is extensive research on the importance of elementary children learning outdoors, digging in the dirt, solving real world environmental problems. With that in mind, I designed this game around gardening with the learning goal for students in grades 3-5 to have basic knowledge and understanding of pollinator gardening to be able to plant one on their own. This includes what pollinators need, what challenges to be prepared for, and what is required to care for a pollinator garden. Upon completion of the game, students should be able to make strategic decisions to design a pollinator garden and explain why certain choices are made. I envision the more time I have and the more I learn how to create on Twine, this game could evolve into a learning platform to help our students with gardening.
I have revised the two main learning objectives based on feedback.
- Given the real—world challenge of designing a pollinator garden, students apply garden ecosystem knowledge to create a thriving pollinator garden, demonstrating decisions that result in a thriving garden.
- Given gardening challenges, students analyze solutions to the challenges, demonstrating decisions that result in a thriving garden.
- Upon completing the game, students will be able to design and upkeep a thriving pollinator garden and explain why certain choices are made for the garden.
Plot
Setting: The setting is somewhere in the near future in a community that thrives when pollinators thrive. The main character is tasked with helping the pollinator garden thrive to the community thrives.
Conflict is planting a pollinator garden from scratch as well as combatting the antagonist, Barren Beast. There is also Lady, a beautiful monarch Butterly character I added as I've worked on the story, who is the mentor and teacher to the main character. As the character makes decisions such as what type of plants (this impacts the garden later), make a shelter/water source, pull weeds or kill with herbicide, addressing pests, garden maintenance plan, and drought.
Resolution and Conclusion: The Climax is navigating the drought the Barren Beast sends. If the player made strategic decisions earlier such as pulling weeds manually, choosing native plants, yes on a maintenance plan, and (still thinking about this) creating an option to collect water, the drought will cause minimal damage. If the player makes a combination of decisions that include cutting corners with weeds and not creating a garden maintenance plan, the drought will cause lots of damage, leaving lots of work after the drought is over.
Decisions
The first decision the player faces is where to start. These are not designed to be super high interest but the player needs to start somewhere. There are three major choices (Water Source, Plants, Shelter) with only one being necessary to proceed through the game (Plants). The first major trade/off decision is native plants vs non-native plants. Almost immediately, the Barren Beast shows up and covers the garden in invasive weeds. So there is a second decision (risk/reward) on manually pull the weeds or use a herbicide.
This is the current iteration of the introduction to the Barren Beast.
As I write, I'm playing with all sort of ideas as part of the rising action. I've been designing with the audience in mind (and considering learning standards as well.) As I write, risk/reward and trade/off decisions seems to make the most sense for this topic.
The main feedback that was helpful to my process was from my professor. Her insight into the challenges within my game helped to stretch my thinking and to try something different. And, of course, iterate again and again. I've worked in multiple choices per page.
One of my classmates gave me some feedback on the Barren Beast -- suggesting a grand entrance claiming the garden as their own. I love this feedback and have worked it into the story. I'm still in process of teasing out the whole story, so I'm excited to see what unfolds.
