Project Darkle

Video Transcription

Hello, my name is Rea Lyerly and for this presentation I will focus on my Project Darkle—a short, interactive story made using Yarn Spinner in Visual Studio Code for Unity. I designed it as a small but expandable narrative to explore player choice, state tracking, and emotionally driven dialogue.

We’ll briefly be going over the tools I used to create and test my paths, the story, characters and nodes, the player’s ability to choose, and the consequences of those choices.

First up, Tools and Design. Yarn Spinner allowed me to separate narrative logic from gameplay systems, which makes collaboration between writers and programmers much cleaner. Visual Studio Code is the editor that I used to write with the Yarn Spinner code. In order to test my story code and its playability, I used Unity.

Next, the story synopsis. “Project Darkle is a narrative-driven interactive story that follows a royal protagonist navigating the haunted corridors of his childhood home years after the death of his mother, the Queen. Bound to a cursed key and the weight of inheritance, he must confront fragmented memories, strained relationships, and the shadow of his parents’ greatest mistake. Through branching dialogue and player choice, the story explores grief, legacy, and the burden of becoming something you never chose to be.”

Now, I’ll introduce the main characters and the node structure. Each non-playable character is color-coded to clearly distinguish and organize their narrative branches.

The player controls the king as he explores the castle corridors in search of answers. While the player has freedom to uncover secrets and act on what they learn, the past remains fixed—what was done before their arrival cannot be undone. However, the future is still up in the air…

Although she dies, Queen Taliyah’s presence shapes the emotional tone of the story. Her absence drives Kerruem’s motivation, and her memory becomes a silent force influencing every choice he makes.

The mentally-ill father of King Kerruem offers the only known source of knowledge of what could be lurking in the darkest spaces of the castle. Following certain paths of his dialogue unlocks secrets that could lead to hidden choices later on. This also applies to other characters—making lines appear or hide depending on the player’s interactions. This structure encourages multiple playthroughs without making them mandatory.

The loyal Hinsthet accompanies King Kerruem throughout his journey, providing another source of exposition and pathing for the player to explore. He is also used as a way to signal irreversible progression points within the narrative.

Bottleneck nodes are the mandatory places that a player must visit to progress the story. These nodes are crucial in allowing the player to choose the dialogue they wish to explore first, while still being able to return and see the rest of what that section has to offer. This encourages exploration for players that like finding all the secrets, but doesn’t force it for those that prefer to speed run.

As the main bottleneck for this section, the UpperCorridors node functions as a choice-central for the first section of the narrative. From here, the player can choose which spaces to explore, but access is conditionally gated based on prior decisions. For example, whether the player can enter the father’s chambers or not depends on if he was knocked unconscious after previous choices.

Once inside the father’s chambers, the player controls how deeply they engage. They can speak with different characters and delve deeper into the story, or they can leave at any time—following paths that lead them back to the bottleneck. Variables were implemented to prevent repeated dialogue and to track how much the player has already learned. This allows conversations to evolve naturally and reinforces the idea that the king remembers what he has discovered. This diagram simplifies the branching structure, but it shows how player choice flows through mandatory nodes before diverging into conditional paths—simulating freedom while retaining structure.

Player Choice and Persistent Consequence. The player can approach the conversation with restraint or authority, and each choice leads to different outcomes. If the player orders punishment, the father is beaten into unconsciousness, and the persistent state variable FatherUnconscious is set—preventing the player from speaking with the father again for that section. These types of choices persist beyond their original scenes, altering future dialogue availability and character states, and therefore the rest of the story as the player goes forward. This gives players consequences for their actions, whatever they may be, and encourages further exploration of the world.

My goal was not just to tell a story, but to design the foundation of a small world—one that can immerse players, adapt to their behavior, and still remain flexible for future development. I hope to see you when the characters finally find the secret of the key to the dark heart.