No Ledge | Ugo Manno

TRAILER

COMING SOON

PITCH

In this narrative adventure game in first person inspired by Firewatch and The Invincible, play as Jonas, a meteorologist in search of his daughter who suddenly disappeared after the appareance of an unprecedented disaster. Discover climatic anomalies with your meteorological vision tool and cross the bad weather with your van, in the hope to find her.

AS A NARRATIVE DESIGNER

No Ledge offers an immersive experience exploring themes related to the family and the impact of humans on nature. Throughout the adventure, the player discovers a vast region affected by strange meteorological phenomena, equipped with infrastructures belonging to the NEMA agency, as well as the evolution of an unresolved relationship between a meteorologist father and his daughter.

During pre-production, our goal was to develop the game’s story. For this, we organized weekly meetings with the entire team to examine in detail the outline of events of the experience, while exploring avenues for interaction and gameplay integration. We wanted to transcribe strong emotions during key moments and make the player feel a fantasy consistent with that of an expert on the field. A timeline of the game’s key events was quickly created and displayed near our workspace to be accessible to the team.

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As a narrative level designer, I was responsible for defining narrative and navigation intentions from the player experience perspective, in collaboration with the creative director. The goal was to sequence each part of the game in several steps, to get as much detail as possible in terms of experience, player behavior and emotions felt. For each sequence, I detailed the player’s required actions as well as the associated events (cutscene triggers, environmental activations, animations, ...), while identifying the needs of the art and technical teams on moment-by-moment parts. We wanted to offer a coherent and varied pacing, both in gameplay and navigation, by exploiting the tools available to the player. This approach was based on a balance between gameplay phases, contemplative moments and narrative sequences. After that, I communicated closely with the environment artists, in order to share the narrative intentions, the level design issues and the overall vision of the desired experience on the game design team.

During the production, I worked on the interactions of the prologue, designed as an interactive narrative sequence similar to the introduction of Firewatch. I focused on the staging of each segment, defining strong intentions combining gameplay, visuals and music, in collaboration with the creative director. The goal was to stage the backstory of the protagonist and his daughter, while gradually increasing the intensity of the sequence.

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I also worked on the pacing of the onboarding and how the player is introduce to the different mechanics, related to dialogues and narrative context at that time. The goal was to transcribe the emotional state of the relationship between the two characters at the beginning of the game, then to create a break in the pacing with the appearance of the tornado at the end of the phase, through a cutscene.

Finally, I also took care of working on a part taking place in the NEMA tower, close to the end of the game. This part has a slower pace in terms of gameplay, being mainly focused on revelations related to the story. It was important to offer specific gameplay in this area, with our analysis tool, in order to bring diversity and convey the appropriate emotions related to an action performed at the same time. We chose to integrate cutscenes at the end of major sequences in this area, in order to maintain a consistent pacing and optimize the chances of assimilating important narrative information.

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In short, the challenges of this project from a narrative point of view were to find a pacing specific to the story we wanted to tell, while highlighting the emotion in the gameplay at each sequence of the player experience. For this, we defined the emotions and experiences that we wanted to convey in detail, for each moment and each major sequence of the game. We regularly communicate with the artistic and technical poles, in order to convey the specific needs of each pole during the sequences. We adjusted each moment of the player experience, in order to get the most relevant pacing possible and convey strong emotions.

WHAT I DID

Game Design

Analysis of our reference games, focused on gameplay features and player interactions with the environment
Reworking of the concept, in order to adopt a consistent direction with the meteorologist's fantasy
Design of the vehicle and avatar 3Cs
Development of different game features, with the Game Design team
UI Mockup for the onboarding

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Narrative Design

Writing of the game's story, with the entire team
Writing a detailed description for each area of the level
Developing world lore and narrative content in the level
Writing dialogues with a dedicated narrative tool "DYNEMA" (dynamic and interactive branching) and integration in Unreal Engine 5

Level Design

Analysis of the pacing and level structure of our game references (Firewatch / The Invincible), focused on navigation and contemplation moments
Design of navigation metrics and asset dimensions in relation to our controllers
Writing level design intentions for each area of the level
Level blockout in Unreal Engine 5, with annotations to clarify gameplay and narrative intentions

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ABOUT THE PROJECT

No Ledge immerses the player into an harrowing story, where a meteorologist is looking for his daughter, who mysteriously disappeared following the appearance of an unprecedented cataclysm. During his adventure, the player faces strange meteorological phenomena that he must analyzed, in order to collect data for NEMA, an meteorological organization. Each discovery made in the field can be reported and contributes to understand the causes of the appearance of this tornado, in order to progress in the traces of his daughter.

Through a lively and dynamic dialogue system, the player alternates between two interlocutors, by bringing out various dilemmas and approaches that enrich the relationship with the playable character. The proposed response choices are based on different invisible archetypes, which influence more or less the evolution of the relationship with the interlocutors. The objective is to propose credible and personal dialogues, in order to reinforce immersion and provoke emotions in the player, through major narrative sequences.