Designing the Mystery: Elision and Exegesis in Games
A mystery is founded on creating a lack, missing information, that we are compelled to see complete, filled out. Mystery stories are playful narratives that tease the reader to figure out the solution to before they get to the end; they are a puzzle that we cannot resist to leave unsolved. Designing a mystery is an exercise both in storytelling and game design, and therefore a foundational skill of narrative design. Narrative designers generate mystery in games by creating ways to encourage exegesis, which entails letting players explore, gather information, and then come up with their own version of the story. This session will examine two essential components that bring together mystery and game design: spatial narratives, where the challenge is to decode how the space reveals what has happened there, and leaving informational gaps that motivate the player to fill them.
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