There are other ways to make games meaningful and Red Hook Studios’ Darkest Dungeon illustrates this beautifully.ĭarkest Dungeon is essentially a roguelike and primarily centers around organizing parties of adventurers to go through procedurally generated dungeons, recovering loot and gaining XP to level up. Narrative is undoubtedly important, but not every game needs or should have a clearly spelled out story not every game should have an RPG’s worth of text and lore. Often the “easiest” way to imbue a game with meaning that makes it memorable is to simply give it a well written narrative or, failing that, to use good writing in other ways as flavor text sprinkled throughout the game, or through creative use of errata like instruction manuals, as I recently suggested. When it comes to a video game, making a game meaningful means giving the player an experience that effortlessly pulls them into the game world, suspends disbelief, and gives them a sense of experiencing something above and beyond the mere mechanics of achieving objectives or winning. It not only makes sense of the world but also lends it a spectral kind of significance. Meaning is sticky it shapes our consciousness and stays with us.