*WINNER* Little Suzie: Exploring Game Mechanics as a Narrative Device

Abstract

Won best undergraduate poster for Computer Science.

This poster shows Little Suzie, a game I made for an honors directed study using the Unity game engine. Little Suzie is a top-down perspective action game in which the player’s goal is to defend an avatar named Suzie from waves of oncoming enemies, and is aimed at conveying feelings of guilt and loss to the player. The goal is to present an anti-narrative so that the player will infer a narrative from the mechanics. Storytelling in games often remains separate from the mechanics, and is presented using methods which have been established in media such as film, novels, and music. Because of this, the use of mechanics as a narrative device has not been explored as thoroughly as elements from other media. The focus of this project has been to remove the storytelling aspect and provide a narrative through the mechanics alone. Much of the potential of video games as an artistic medium stems from their interactive nature, which is not taken advantage of when the mechanics are treated as being separate from the narrative.