: Re: How do I make a very short story powerful? I'm currently working on a project where I write events for a story driven video game. The limitation is that I have to get through a discovery,

@Phylliss352

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I've not seen many short story-based video games; but among those I have, by far my favourite is What Remains of Edith Finch. You explore an abandoned home to learn the tragic causes of early deaths attributed to a family curse. I'd say the total amount of writing in the game is comparable to a film or novella, but it's mostly read aloud or revealed through flashback, so the player doesn't feel like they have to read much. The main thing I'd learn from watching a playthrough of it, if I were you, is to be creative with how part of the story is told; each character in the game has their background revealed in a very different way. There's a lot of experimenting with media; for example, one story is a narrated comic book, while another plays out to classical music, while yet another is juxtaposed with an apt dream sequence (oh wait, I could be describing two very different deaths with that).

On the other hand, there are games that involve lots of reading. Pokémon is the biggest franchise of all time, so the formula can work (probably even more so if your story is short). Then there are stories where the writing is either aural or textual, depending on the version you play. I first met the Broken Sword franchise on the GBA, which didn't have room for the PC version's audio versions of speech, so the dialogue became subtitles.

But for all those reservations, What Remains is a great example of how you can tell a sad moving story in a brief but quite wordy video game. I suppose the other lesson from that game is to make something just a little more interactive than a film, with some scenes optional and all unlocked by the player solving a puzzle. (And make sure you don't watch a speedrun; you'll want to get ideas from every part of their plot.)

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