Narrative Design Document

← Streetlife

The design document behind Streetlife: concept and tone, character bios, the stat system that tracks every choice, and an excerpt from the scene where the story's first real fork happens.

Concept Overview

This is the design blueprint for a prototype built for a client, to a brief of "mobile crime game with life-sim elements," with full creative control over story, characters and structure beyond that.

Genre & Tone

A branching crime drama, using first-person internal narration and third-person scene direction, which will be translated into static art. All narrative elements will be ported into a mobile-first UI. Starting with a set main character, perhaps we change that to allow players to create their own character once the game's life-sim elements are nailed down, as the story will be focused on a main character and their own personal struggle.

Tonally, we're going for a character-driven crime thriller over an action game. Rich has — and can build — relationships with new and old friends, but his line of work and choices will lead to paranoia, betrayal, and moral compromise as the stakes escalate. Nobody in this story should be purely good or purely evil. Every major character has wants and needs that drive their decisions.

Structure at a Glance

To emphasise player freedom, a big choice that changes an entire playthrough needs to happen early on. This decision — whether Rich joins his friend's crew or doesn't — will show players that decisions matter, and encourage multiple playthroughs. Both paths will converge on a confrontation with the same antagonist and the same set of possible outcomes, but arrived at through genuinely different content, choices, and relationships along the way.

The full choice-and-consequence structure is mapped separately; at a high level, the plan calls for 14 distinct endings, ranging from abrupt, consequence-driven deaths to a hard-won escape to full moral corruption. Some are minor changes; others are significantly different.

Core Themes

Debt and obligation

Literal (Rich's mother's debt), and figurative (calling in favours for those he's helped).

Escalating complicity

No single choice in the story should read as a leap into villainy. Each one should be a small, defensible step from the last, until the distance travelled becomes impossible to walk back.

Loyalty under pressure

Almost every major turn in the story should be a betrayal, a test of loyalty, or a choice about who Rich is willing to protect and who he's willing to sacrifice.

Who you become

Ensure choices significantly affect the outcome. Who do you side with? Who do you betray? Who betrays you?

Meeting the Life-Sim Brief

As this is a branching narrative proof-of-concept, the life-sim elements will come later. They will fill in the gaps, turning this into a much lengthier experience. Life-sim elements could include: random encounters, shopping to increase stats, dates, building and running your own "gang-within-a-gang," buying property etc.

Once these elements and the progress trees are built out, we can port and alter the story retroactively, removing more personalised elements if we'd rather have an unnamed protagonist, or removing some of the romance elements to leave exclusively in the life-sim side of things.

Alongside the life-sim side of things, a stat system (below) will run concurrently through both the story and the management. This will ensure that every decision, both story and sim, will be meaningful.

Tracked Consequence

Four stats should persist across the entire game and quietly shape which content and endings are available, without ever being surfaced as a game to "win":

Infamy

The character's notoriety, built through their actions.

Street Smarts

Smart decisions that don't draw attention.

Earnings

Currency, used to buy things in both story and sim.

HP

The player's health, affected both in story and sim (we would need to heavily encourage players to top it up in sim moments if a big story beat where they could die is coming up).

Distinctive Narrative Devices

The same event, two perspectives

One pivotal moment — a heist — should appear twice across the two branches. One side is from your friend's crew who can join early on; the other is from another crew who attack the heist. Players who see both should be shown the same betrayal from two entirely different vantage points, without either branch ever explaining the connection outright.

Real branches, not texture

Every meaningful fork in the story should change content, not just a line of dialogue. Flavour and voice can vary scene to scene, but a choice diamond should always mean the story is genuinely different on the other side of it.

A companion who fades or stays

One major character should travel with Rich into the story's opening moves on both paths, but should only stay present through to the climax on one of them, dropping out of the second half entirely on the other. The same late-game confrontation should play out with a noticeably different emotional register depending on whether Rich is facing it alone.

Character Bios

Systems & Mechanics

The stat system needs to give weight to choices without turning the story into something to optimise. None of the four numbers should ever be shown as a bar to fill or a score to beat — they simply track your choices, either in the story or in the sim.

In the prototype, I'll suggest when and how these stats should change, but they need a proper balancing pass before being properly implemented.

The Four Stats

Infamy

Every choice that crosses a real line should move this number. In some cases this will increase it a fraction, in others a fathom. Your infamy score should directly affect which choices are available at certain key points, helping distinguish playthroughs, and moments that lower it will typically raise your Street Smarts. Cannot go below 0, and starts at 0.

Street Smarts

Tracks reading a situation instead of muscling through it. Patient or observant choices raise it, usually by 1 to 10 at a time, and "Infamy" choices will lower it. This will also affect which choices are available at key story beats. Cannot go below 0 and starts at 0.

Earnings

Tracks cash in hand. Jobs pay out, and some choices should cost money to avoid Infamy (and increase Street Smarts). Earnings will play into the larger life-sim elements, and will need to be balanced based on the cost of items, actions, and choices made in the life-sim side of the game.

HP

Tracks Rich's (or the PC's, depending on whether we go with a fixed main character) health. Starts at 100 and only ever goes down in story moments, depending on choices. Actions in the life-sim element can increase and decrease this. Will need to be balanced to ensure players aren't caught in fail-state loops, perhaps by removing loss of health from story elements entirely but keeping "death" states based on choices.

How It's Surfaced

Stats should live on their own screen, separate from the main story view, so a player can go check where they stand without it being forced in front of them constantly.

The moment a choice actually moves a stat, that needs to be visible in the moment it happens, not just buried on a screen the player has to go looking for. Something like a small +1 Infamy or -1 Street Smarts should appear right when the choice lands, either as plain text like that or with a recognisable icon for each stat instead of the word. Worth testing both and seeing which reads faster at a glance.

Open Questions

Whether Infamy and Street Smarts should start gating dialogue and reactions in this pass, or wait until the life-sim layer is being built.

How directly Earnings and HP should hook into life-sim actions once that layer exists (does resting cost money, does money buy back HP, and so on).

Whether a relationship or affection stat belongs on this list. Will depend on whether we want romantic elements in the story, or leave them for the life-sim side of things. Revisit once the narrative prototype is complete.

Script Excerpt

The scene below covers the first real fork in the story: whether Rich joins Gonzo's crew, or turns him down.