GDC 2025 Session Viewer
'DREDGE' and Yarn Spinner: Building Narrative with Open Source
Jon Manning (Narrative Technologies Lead, Secret Lab)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass - Get your pass now!
Track: Programming
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: Intermediate
DREDGE surfaced in 2023 as one of the biggest indie hits of the year, and its critically-acclaimed story was powered by the open source narrative toolkit Yarn Spinner. Join Yarn Spinner's lead developer as we break down the narrative systems and implementation of the open-world fishing horror, how the DREDGE team created an accessible, localized dialogue system with deep integration into gameplay systems, how the game's various narrative delivery systems all worked together to tell a compelling story, and how you can do the same at any scale for your game.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn how to leverage off-the-shelf tooling to deliver high-end narrative experiences, how to design narrative content pipelines that allow for rapid-but-stable content iteration, and how to get the most out of open-source narrative tooling, on time and on a budget.
Intended Audience
This talk is intended for narrative designers, programmers, writers, and producers; in other words, anyone who needs to care about how dialogue and narrative is assembled within the game.
