Have you ever wondered what game writers think about games, or about how game writers think about games? When a story doesn't click for you or when the writing jars, do you take a moment to wonder why? What is the thought behind this? What are the steps, the processes, the logic? Why are some things good and some things great? Is there a science behind it, and if there is, what is it? A new book published by Inkle - the celebrated British studio responsible for TR-49, Heaven's Vault, 80 Days, A Highland Song, Expelled!, and plenty more - hopes to show us.
The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope it's called; "Kaleidoscope" because it contains a kaleidoscopic multitude of ideas. Inside are more than 100 essays on the game writing craft, written by the people who write them, or narratively design them, or in some way shape the worlds we play in. Notable names include Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner and Tomb Raider writer Rhianna Pratchett, but there are many, many more.
That sounds like heavy reading, and in the papery flesh, it does look and feel like heavy reading; no shade Inkle but it reminds me of a school text book. Once inside, though, things change. Kaleidoscope is actually light and moreishly snackable. These essays, they're really a collection of short thoughts: handfuls of advice blown quickly into your face one after another. In a clever and heartwarming nod to Choose Your Own Adventure game books, you're also encouraged to weave around the book whichever way you please, as there's no set route through it. You don't have to read it front to back. Each essay has a suggestion of two similar pieces to venture to next. I love that.
And sure, the advice here is aimed at developers, but since when did that dissuade any of us from wanting to eavesdrop? A conversation about games is a conversation about games, and it's all the juicier for coming from the mind of someone on the inside and experienced in making them. An essay about how to make NPC 'barks' better - lines of dialogue a person blurts when they walk around; opportunistic segue to a piece I wrote about why everyone swears so much in The Witcher 3 - is as much an eyehole crack in the wall of game development as an essay about learning to love players who hate you.
Mary Kenney, who wrote Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales and co-led story development and narrative direction on the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine, wrote that last one, that incendiary one, about players hating you. "What happens when the player fucking hates you?" she writes. It's a topic she struggled with in the wake of GamerGate after being beaten down by an audience she's supposed to be creating for. How do you regain a love for the audience after that? "I don't know when I'll trust the player again," she says, though she's finding her way again; she's currently working on Cyberpunk 2. It's a sobering reminder of the real harm toxicity does
???? THE GAME NARRATIVE KALEIDOSCOPE ❄️ is out NOW! www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope 100+ essays on writing & narrative design, with articles from the writers of Baldur's Gate 3, Control, Call of Duty, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Sam and Max... ALSO the Kaleidoscope Podcast with 2 full eps!
— inkle (@inkle.co) 4 March 2026 at 09:54
There were a couple of themes I followed around the book, and one, I'm sure, won't surprise you. It's to do with being evil in games, something you'll know I'm fond of, if you've read my Bertie's Evil Adventures escapades in Baldur's Gate 3. I found a few essays about this. "There will always be a few drama-loving sickos who gravitate towards the evil options in a choice-driven game," writes Christine Love - who made erotic visual novel Ladykiller in a Bind and lesbian road trip RPG Get in the Car, Loser - as if speaking directly to me. "What makes an evil choice good is that it surprises the player, and forces them out of their comfort zone, but most importantly, it creates drama and interest." I'd agree. "Big consequences make for a better story."
But a counterpoint I didn't expect, which has given me pause for thought, came from Adam Heine, who I spoke to before and who was a writer on Planescape: Torment many years ago, then on spiritual successor Torment: Tides of Numenera years later. (I recorded a 'making of' Planescape: Torment podcast years ago but I've no idea where the recording has gone after various backend podcast migrations.) Heine has certainly written evil-style dialogue options in the past, but in his Kaleidoscope essay he says the way of the world is such, currently, that it lessened his enthusiasm for doing this. "In a world where cruelty is increasingly a viable political strategy? I don't feel the need to provide that particular player fantasy," he says. And it's hard to disagree.
Another thread I chased around the book was leaving gaps in games for players to step into. Pete Stewart, who's a lovely person and currently a senior writer at Respawn, where he helped make Jedi Survivor (he wrote for Total War before that), says inviting our imaginations into a game is vital for making it feel whole. Don't explain it all, he says. "Hooks, presented but unexplained, provide opportunities for imagination: these are the gaps between the bricks through which players may glimpse at the untamed garden beyond." Then, and I love this: "The guesswork is the stuff of stories."
We Happy Few and South of Midnight writer Alex Epstein agrees. "Mysteries create a feeling that there is more to this world than you can see. A world without mysteries feels artificial," he says. Epstein goes on to share some "dirty tricks", as he calls them, for making worlds feel whole. Having mysteries is one of them, absences is another, misleads is another still, then there's unreliable narratives, conflicting narratives, translucent lies. "We have to make the player fill in our world for us," he writes. "The player extrapolates a richer, more convincing world inside their head than we can ever build inside a computer. [...] So rumple all the beds in your game world and make the player wonder who's been sleeping there."
"Rumple all the beds in your game world and make the player wonder who's been sleeping there"
A few other ideas grabbed my attention in passing, such as one by Sea of Thieves writer Chris Allcock, who wonders why there aren't more 'Previously...' moments in games. You know the kind: the kind we see on TV shows. "It's our chance to be the gaming sidekick who's there to help when our friend turns to us and asks the age-old question: What am I meant to be doing?'" he writes. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt actually does this quite well, by the way. Another idea that grabbed me was Andrew Plotkin (Hadean Lands) wondering why games don't ever seem to tell us how long there is left of them. Books do, films do, and they're none the worse for it. "Narrative tension is built on the shape of the story," he says.
What does Jordan Mechner have to say? It's a fundamental one: it's a reminder that games are not any other medium but themselves. "A game is what the players do," Mecher writes. "We don't play video games to passively watch someone else's adventures or experience emotions vicariously. We play games to become the active protagonist of our own adventures." Pull players away from that for too long by, say, playing them a cinematic for too long, and you risk ruining the experience. "Hold them there too long and your game will start to drown."
I'm cruel for not sharing each and every essay I've read as I've rummaged around Kaleidoscope's pages, but there isn't the space here, nor have I read all of them. I haven't read anywhere near all of them. But I have learnt things. I've learnt about the process of making games and I've learnt about the process of writing in ways that I've employed myself; one micro-lesson quietly revolutionised how I write. Thank you, Alice Camp.
I feel like I've indirectly been invited to a kind of club, or at least I've been invited to stand outside while the cool people inside say intelligent things and I listen in through the post box and steal the words for my own. It's as though in collating this book, Inkle's Jon Ingold has given substance to something usually substance-less: this invisible world of people making games.
We know these people who make games are out there, that these people who write and narratively shape games exist, and that there's probably a lot of them who do it, but it's not until you see them gathered together in some tangible way - say in a book like this - that you start to understand how many there actually are. That's a lot of humans, and I'm sure it's only the tip of an iceberg. That metaphorical club house I'm standing outside of, its windows are wet with the condensation of all the bodies within, all huffing and puffing their creativity and being excited by each other. Thoughts connecting with thoughts: wouldn't it be a shame to lose that?
I'll close by sharing perhaps one of the best opening lines of an essay I've ever read. Christian Donlan used to tell me that the opening line of a piece is a gift: it's our chance to strike out at the reader and convince them to read on, he'd say, or words to that effect. I'm sure he'd put it better. Nowhere have I seen this demonstrated better than in the opening essay of Kaleidoscope by Alistair Atcheson (The Incredible Playable Show). "Hollywood actor Pierce Brosnan slumps lazily in his armchair," he writes. "'Suck my toes, my darling,' he says." How can you not want to read on after that?
Have a lovely weekend.
The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope is available in various editions from Inkle's website, at very reasonable prices. There's also an associated Kaleidoscope podcast, in which the book's essay writers are interviewed as part of deeper conversations.
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