Storyboards
Share the narrative of the experience using images to clarify the intended user journey.
A Storyboard is like a comic strip. It shows how the narrative progresses, and what the intended experience is for the user at each step of their journey.
Defining this flow acts as a guide through each of the main objectives and points of interest the user will engage within in your experience. This will help you set the pace and the tone, as well as give you the opportunity to review the entire arch of your narrative.
Including a Storyboard will also help contributors understand what your proposed project is about. Where the Concept Document identifies structural guidelines the Storyboard helps establish emotive guidelines.
Visual guides like this establish strong foundational points of reference that help you or your team synchronize through the development stages of the project as well as serve as inspiration and motivation.
Your Storyboard doesn't need to account for every single step the player might take, but it should at least identify critical points that impact the overall experience.
Starting Points
If you aren't clear on what some key points might be, here are some examples you could identify that may be useful when plotting impactful moments in your experience.
Where does the player start in the game?
What does the player need to do to get their first objective?
Where does the player need to go to complete the main objective?
Do they need to fight or solve puzzles to get there?
What does the player need to do to win (or lose) the game?
How does the story unfold in the game?
Resources
How you create your Storyboard is up to you. It can be hand-drawn or digitally drawn, displayed on post-it notes or a mindmap, the choice is yours.
If you choose to draw your Storyboard digitally there are some useful visual editing programs you like, such as Paint, Photoshop, Gimp and Procreate.
If you are looking for a way to pull all your images together, here are some online non-affiliated third-party Storyboard resources you can use to help develop your Storyboard:
Storyboard Creator | ThePlot (Has free trial)
Online Storyboard Creator | Boords (Has free trial)
Mindmap maker | Miro (free)
However you go about this step, the most important outcome is that you get the narrative out of your head and into a visual format that gives you a clear overview to use as a guide.
Stick figures are okay if you do not consider yourself to be an artist!
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