With INDIE INTERVIEWS, I talk to the game developers hanging here on Cohost to learn more about new games you might love.
This happens to me all the time: I see a cool game out there, and I wish that there were beginner-friendly tools to make something like that. It was a thought I had specifically upon seeing Disco Elysium: "is there a way to make a game with a general layout like this?" Then, a few months into using Cohost, my wish was answered! I found Narrat, the new narrative game engine by @liananana. It looks like a great way to get started on narrative games that incorporate stats, skill checks, and inventory. I wanted to reach out to Liana to hear more about it.
You can get Narrat on the official website
You can get Infierno Rubi, one of the games shown above, on itch.io.
You can get Will This Bitter Night Bring Change? - Two Women in Trouble, one of the games shown above, on itch.io
You can join the Narrat Game Jam that's going on right now!
Introduce yourself for everyone here on Cohost: Who are you?
Hi I'm Liana, a trans woman from the UK. I've been making games, websites and other things for a bit more than a decade now. I used to work making web games, though these days my work is more typical non-game web development. And I've been working on narrat the last 2 years or so as my main side project
Tell me more about your game engine, Narrat. I've been very tempted to start learning it the past few weeks.
So Narrat is essentially a game engine for making narrative games with RPG mechanics. This is a relatively vague definition as the customisation and scripting system mean you could use it for a few different kinds of games, but fundamentally it's for making text-heavy games with branching dialogue, and (optional) RPG mechanics.
So early on, I was inspired by Disco Elysium and wanted that basic layout with visual stuff on the side and dialogue on the right in a vertical panel. I find that this layout is much easier to focus on that your typical visual novel layout where it's individual dialog boxes. Feels more like reading a page that you can scroll through for context. The whole characters and skills system was also inspired by that game.
Reminder to self: make something in Narrat
