Indie game design principles for alternative Storytelling / how to do indie game

A presentation by Tynan Sylvester About his game design concepts with his game Rimworld. He Claims his game to be a Story Generator and I don't agree in every part of that but he starts off by citing Dwarf Fortress as Inspiration for narrative Storytelling by game mechanics. Essentially the game pits Players in Events that may or may not be difficult to overcome. Game characters Need to be relatable but it's actually done without much "writing" - like writing stories. The chain of Events make up the Story. Or at least the odd memorable playthrough.

He cites a famous Dwarf Fortress playthrough, I'll tack on the Story of "Boatmurdered" as Illustration.

Also has some interesting concepts on how to design and create game. Seems to be on the "swim against current" side.



Boatmurdered is succession game in Dwarf Fortress. Much of the charm Comes from it being a succession game, it's a Story of stark raving mad dwarfs, man-murdering elephants, catastrophic design decisions but I think they left out the Killer Carps (Warning: graphics are highly inexplicit):

lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/