How storytelling computer games is changing literature

RNZ News

18-05-2025

media arts about 1 hour ago
You find yourself adrift, far, far below the ocean's surface in an octagonal ball-shaped subversive submarine. Deep sea divers have come to your aid. They have a home base on the seafloor, but are fighting over whether to take you to their shadowy leader, called The Mind, or to the dangerous world of the surface. Time is ticking: the horror of the attention of a krake, a giant sea monster await those who dally. You have to try and get this bunch of divers to pull in the same direction. Sub-Verge is a tense narrative puzzle based computer game, which debuted at narrative video game festival LudoNarraCon this month. It's a game full of characters, dialogue and story twists. And its creator is Zach Dodson, who has even authored a prequel novella called Subtle Mind. An Associate Professor at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington Dodson leads a newly launched Design & Visual Narrative programme bringing together students from film, music, theatre, and design. He also teaches the Writing for Games course in the School of Design and co-founded what is called the Visual Narrative Lab at Te Herenga Waka. With his teaching and his own independent game studio he aims to push the boundaries of narrative-driven games. That started with actual books. He wrote, designed and illustrated what he calls an 'illuminated novel' Bats of the Republic which in recognising as one of the books of 2015 The Washington Post called "a glorious demonstration of what old-fashioned paper can still do in the hands of a creative genius." Dodson is part of the drive in New Zealand for the development of innovation in game development, with funding received from New Zealand Film Commission and CODE NZ towards research into interactive dialogue systems. Kuu is a new moonbase based game that started as a book (Zach shows you through it here) and it was recently pitched to publishers at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco as part of Representing Games, a group of eight Aotearoa New Zealand design studios funded by CODE NZ to generate business opportunities for the country. https://visualnarrativelab.nz/