Black Hole Salvage

I’ll admit that I was more than a little dismayed as a narrative designer first and foremost when the theme for the GameLab 2023 was revealed to be “Arcade,” a prompt which, to be candid, I felt left very little room for my skillset. This unease grew when we presented our initial pitch to our Ubisoft advisor, who lightly suggested that even our proposal for collectible audio logs and overarching narrative would likely not pass muster.

Nevertheless determined to contribute as much as I possibly could, I took on the role of Level Designer. I had initially pitched our core setting and game concept – a scavenger racing through a space station that was slowly tipping beyond the event horizon of a black hole – and decided to iterate on that idea through the game’s three levels in whatever form I could.

To my surprise, I actually found that a skillset centered on storytelling through gameplay actually translated quite well even outside of the constraints of narrative design. Things like the rule of three, how and when to efficiently use exposition, and a gradual increase in tension apply both in writing a game’s story and constructing its levels, and I worked closely with Sarah, our fearless leader and Lead Programmer, to build out the game’s world.