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My Contribution: On Your Tail (Memorable Games)

What I did in a few words

  • One of two principal writers during the alpha stage
  • Created branching dialogues and scripted interconnected quests
  • Onboarded and led three writers/narrative designers
  • Designed levels for the majority of interior environments

What I did in a little more words

I worked at Memorable Games for a year and a half. My responsibilities evolved significantly over that time, giving me the opportunity to develop a wide range of skills.

Narrative Designer

Finding the plot

Most of my time at Memorable Games I worked as a narrative designer along with the other main writer. We were hired around the same time, but I joined him as fellow writer some months later at the end of my internship (and of my time as level designer; most on this at the end of the post).

We rebuilt the narrative of the game almost entirely. The original idea had been developed by an external writer who, when I transitioned to narrative designer, was not involved in the project anymore.

Most of the environments and the characters had already been conceptualized and were being modelled. However, there was no coherent narrative to tie them together and inform the art department. Given we were developing a narrative game, we thought that was the main problem. Therefore, we started from the basics and redefined who our characters were and what kind of world they lived in as quickly as we could.

After that, we focused our effort on writing a first draft of the golden path of the game. We (Fabio Zanetta and I) did our best for almost three weeks; invaluable was the help from then-lead designer Nicola Dau, who offered insights and generous, efficient feedback. In the end, we were greatly satisfied with our joint effort.

I left the company eight months prior to the release of the game. The plot changed drastically after my departure, as the scope and the type of the content. Still, I am tremendously proud of what we did: it was time-constrained, naive to a degree, but honest and inspired. To the point that served as the basis for the intensive content production that followed my departure.

Delivering narrative

In between these major goals, we were basically everywhere around the studio sprinkling narrative and meaning. As I anticipated before, the environments were sometimes disconnected from the world and the characters.

To address this, I collected all the narrative documentation into a wiki. We landed on Confluence. In hindsight, the wiki was implemented too late in the production process to be fully effective. Plus, keeping it up to date proved to be time-consuming; in a context where we had huge time-constraints that was not sustainable.

Writing, writing, and more writing (plus scripting, scripting, and more scripting)

Last but not least, we wrote a lot of dialogues, scenes, item descriptions and flavor text. On Your Tail aimed to be a narrative sandbox with real depth. We had a huge cast of characters who wanted to talk and were the only two writers in the team for most of my time at the company. Even when we were eventually joined by additional forces, only Fabio and I had enough expertise of the project to write premium content, like the main story.

Writing so much was a great opportunity for real growth. I had very limited experience in writing game dialogues when I joined Memorable Games; I had spent most of my writing time on plots, synopsis and script fixing by that point. Instead, when I left the company, I had built a new skill by writing hundreds of lines in a very short time. I am far from being a master dialogue writer; but I unlocked a new skill, and that is what I ask from a job: to let me grow.

Oh, but do not make the assumption that we were merely writers. We were also scripters, and this was by far the most challenging part of our job. On Your Tail was intended to be an open-world quest-based narrative game. Quests were the fundamental blocks of our content. Thus, using our tools (Articy in combination with the Unity Dialogue System and custom functions), we implemented logic for quests from beginning to end. As narrative designers, we were completely autonomous when it came to generating content for the game. It was empowering, and it demanded great care: one wrong line of conditions could break the entire flow of the game. A worthy challenge.

In fact, my only regret when I left was not having spent more time scripting rather than writing. Becoming a little more technical and engine-savvy is one of my major long-term career goals, and I could have made a few steps more forward while working at Memorable Games.

Oh well, it will be for the next time. At the end, I scripted less, yes, but I led.

Leading

Around the time Fabio and I finished the first draft of the synopsis for the golden path, Nicola asked me to become lead narrative designer to help coordinate the expanding design team. We were in the process of recruiting two more designers and a writer, and the responsibilities Nicola was facing were increasingly complex. I accepted with enthusiasm. The role was more challenging than I expected, but it provided invaluable opportunities to learn.

As Fabio focused on producing content as the main writer, I started to lead the writing team and represent it in front of the other leads and the creative director. I worked very closely with Nicola in particular, who was more experienced and provided me with valuable, actionable feedback. We faced a variety of challenges, including:

  • Coordinating with the artists as efficiently as we could; they were closing assets at a steady pace.
  • Working with the puzzle designers to facilitate the creations of the many puzzles planned for the game; they were the most important content in regard to the detective fantasy and required great attention.
  • Building tools with the programmers; our greatest challenge was understanding which tools were actually needed and which ones were only nice-to-have additions, whose cost of time and resources actually overshadowed the benefits.

As the narrative lead, I also onboarded the new writers to our pipeline, tools and project as a whole. One of the two writers, Doralice, was very skilled as a writer but at her first experience in the game industry; we covered together most of the basics. Onboarding a person working at her first game was incredibly satisfying: thanks for trusting me, Doralice!

I was tasked with a leading role very early in my career, and I reckon I could do better as a leading figure under a lot aspects. Despite this, many of my former colleagues came forward and expressed honest appreciation for my work: they felt I had helped them during my time as a lead. That is really satisfying to me, and I do not regret accepting the role at all.

Level Designer

My time at Memorable Games started with an internship when the company was still called Mixed Bag. When I was hired, it was my first job and I was fairly inexperienced.

Fortunately for me, I found my first place as the level designer. On Your Tail required quite a straightforward level design, with no need for complex environments or byzantine paths. Just put a nice view behind a corridor, open the sight in unexpected ways and give the player some material for the photo mode: that’s it. Thus, it was the perfect role for me to learn how to work in an actual team without worrying about tasks too above my level of confidence. On the side of the company, they were understaffed at the time and needed a person to take care of the environments. It was a mutual benefit.

It was very fun, and propelled me towards the narrative department. I worked closely with Fabio, the main writer, in defining the fundamental layout of places and their narrative package (background, connections to characters, hooks for quests, environmental storytelling bits).
To help the artists, Fabio and I came up with a three tier structure for the documentation of the props we expected to be made:

  • Hero props were items necessary to convey concepts and themes that tied to the main narrative. They were top priority.
  • Silver props were nice to have, mostly to add color to the characters inhabiting a spaace (like a bizzarre invention for the town’s quirky inventor who lives in a workshop). One of them could do enough.
  • Bronze props were for the artists to use as inspiration to fill the scene. They added further depth but were in no way necessary for the player to fully appreciate the characters. Artists could easily skip them if time required.

As the environments to block out and define finished, I had come to know the characters and the story, had worked shoulder to shoulder with Fabio, and had earned credibility as a storyteller in the eyes of the rest of the team. I felt it was time to propose myself as an additional narrative designer and writer. But Nicola was quicker and asked me first. Damn.

Image credit: Memorable Games, Humble Games