Hello everyone!
After the launch of Kaodi, we’ve seen that one of the aspects you’ve enjoyed the most is the narrative. That’s why we’ve decided to share how we designed the Inner World and the narrative progression in Barren’s journey 🍃
Inner World Design
It didn’t take long for us to realize this would be quite a challenge—not just from an implementation standpoint, but also in terms of narrative coherence. What kind of system could we use to make sure we didn’t make mistakes in the progression of concepts? How could we create a balance between them so that some levels wouldn’t feel overloaded while others remained empty?
Once we started writing the first drafts of the dialogues, we noticed the issue of not having designed the concept progression beforehand. We wanted each concept to matter equally, and it was essential to define what we wanted the player to reflect on with each one.
We tested several systems that didn’t quite meet our needs, so we decided to create one from scratch—and it turned out to be the best decision we could’ve made!
The Concept Metro Map
That’s what we called it. Many members of Outlander Games live in the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, so it’s very common for us to interact daily with the Madrid Metro maps.
We came up with the idea that each concept would be like a metro line, with its own specific color, and that the different interactions/updates of that concept would act as stations.
This exercise helped us a lot when defining connections between concepts, identifying areas or NPCs with overloaded interactions, distributing the narrative weight across levels, and even spotting dynamics that we had not yet implemented in the Inner World code.
Want to see the result?