Mellow Games creates deep emotional experiences through accessible, quirky and imaginative interactive stories.
It was founded by Melanie Taylor, indie game developer, narrative designer and co-creator of the award-winning games Orwell – Keeping an Eye on You and Orwell – Ignorance is Strength.
We believe in cooperation, inclusivity and elevating underrepresented groups in the games industry. In the spirit of this, we love networking and sharing knowledge, especially if you are new to the games industry, so please feel free to contact us if you need advice on a career in games, indie game development, bizdev or narrative design for games. Also check out Mel’s previous talks about narrative design below if you would like to learn more about this.
Blueberry is supported by Screen Queensland and Film- und Medienstiftung NRW.
Mellow Games is accelerated by SpielFabrique Acceleration Programme.
Talks
Freeplay Independent Games Festival 2021
“Pieces of Me: Making Personal Games”
Content warning: This talk mentions things such as suicide, depression and self-harm.
When I started making Blueberry, I had the idea of making a game about someone who stayed in bed. What if you never start the day? Never continue to live your life? Getting up in the morning is often the first condition for anything meaningful to happen. It was much later I found out that wanting to stay in bed indefinitely can also be a sign of depression. Blueberry invites you on a journey through a woman’s mind from birth to death. You climb the Tower of Life and gather the pieces of Blueberry’s shattered memories, find the missing ones and unravel the mystery of her trauma. Developing Blueberry became a conversation with myself about childhood trauma, motherhood and about a deep disconnect from the safety of family. It probably says many things about myself although I never intended it to be about me. This is a personal story about putting parts of yourself into your game, creating intimate and meaningful experiences and how to separate yourself from your game.
Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019
“The Architecture of Designing story-focused Games – Lighting the Way through the Narrative”
It is widely believed that games should first and foremost be driven by their mechanics and only after this (if at all) focus on narrative design. This talk offers a different approach and is about designing a solid and engaging story first and then designing the mechanics around it. Designing the narrative of a game is a bit like planning a prank: You are not going to know how your “victim” will react, but you should plan for the most likely outcomes. Lighting the way through the story and guiding the player is essential for them to get the most coherent and engaging experience out of it. This talk will give attendees tools for this design approach as well as an understanding of how to “grow” mechanics from theme, how to pace your level design to fit storytelling and using symbolism in mechanics and environmental design in order to support the game’s themes.
Game Connect Asia Pacific 2018
“Creating Emotional Engagement through Narrative and Game Design”
Check out Mel’s GCAP 2018 talk about how to create emotional engagement in narrative and game design, also featuring Matt Trobbiani.
The key to creating meaningful player interaction is getting the player emotionally invested in your game and keeping them engaged throughout the playing experience. This talk is about how to induce this engagement by using known UX lessons, dramatic composition in narrative design and variation in the core mechanics of your game, making them deep rather than complex. Learn how to cleverly focus on strengths of the limitations within your core game mechanics, creating immersion from the moment the player opens the game, designing an easily accessible tutorial, establishing and breaking core mechanics, utilizing the structure of your narrative design and supporting it through your level design as well as using engaging writing and powerful sound design to create memorable gaming moments for your players. Using the award-winning privacy invasion thriller Orwell as a case study, Mel Taylor talks about game design lessons from working on the development of one of the most successful text-based indie games of the last years. Orwell explores contemporary themes of security, privacy, and our interpretation of online information. It has received critical acclaim from players and media worldwide.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Orwell and Hacknet.
