Chapter 1

An educational exploration game designed to encourage young people to write their own stories and to support their creative writing process.

Chapter 1 is an educational exploration game that is both fun to play as well as delivering an impactful learning experience. It is designed to tackle ‘blank page anxiety’ and other barriers preventing young people from engaging with creative writing in the classroom.

Players design and take control of a protagonist, exploring different worlds, encountering enemies, puzzles and other obstacles. Rather than using combat, items or other RPG staples to pass obstacles, players must write out their own solutions using nothing more than a keyboard and their imagination.

The game uses natural language processing to generate new writing prompts based on what the player has already written. Everything the player writes is saved into one document, so that as players progress through each dungeon they build up a story. This can be read and downloaded at the end of the game.

The prototype for Chapter 1 was developed using HTML5 and Javascript with Pixi.JS. I was responsible for design, code and pixel art, with additional character portrait art by Molly Barrett.