Incredibly, or maybe not, even our development process had reflected this discovered theme. It was about adventure for adventure’s sake, about following impulse down an unknown path. To my surprise and enormous relief, I found that what the game itself had to say about adventure was better than anything I had thought I wanted to say. But here we ran into a complication: how could the game present a cohesive moral tale when the tale itself is of the player’s choosing? Our solution was to structure the story in a way that both beginning and end were consistent, with the player’s influence shaping all events in the middle of the story in a way that developed a single theme.Īs I tackled these challenges over the following year and saw the narrative gradually take a final form, I took a fresh look at the design and story as a whole to see what themes had emerged. Designing for folktale tone put the player in the role of storyteller, one step removed from our protagonists.
Designing for folktale length gave us a branching narrative with a short play cycle. Of the many elements of folklore that helped to establish what we describe as a “folktale adventure,” three contributed most to the design of Burly Men at Sea: length, tone, and moral.
Burly men at sea final ending series#
With each session, the player returns from one journey to set sail again, uncovering new paths for a series of kindred but distinct adventures. In it, branching scenes combine to form a variable tale with a single, overarching theme. Burly Men at Sea is constructed as a story-building game.
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