This thesis examines NieR: Automata, a video game published in 2017 on PlayStation 4 from a narratological perspective to see how it composes its narrative elements to make an excellent argument about existence. The director Yōkō Tarō argues that, we could and should exert our agency to make the choice in our life, thus this is how we grant our life meaning. This thesis aims at providing a relatively comprehensive analysis on Automata’s profound understanding and presentation of Sartre's existentialism, its ingenious narrative construction, and the close association between them, through a contextualization on Sartre's existentialism, and a game components analysis. Yōkō takes his works as exploration on the usual themes and elements in the video games like violence and life, and Automata becomes his answer to one's life. From a comprehensive demonstration involving Automata’s game and narrative structure, we could clearly see that these two aspects are built so closely – all the game components are all associated with its central argument about existence and agency, and affirming or enhancing it from different perspectives, including its game systems, playthrough process, maps and stages, et cetera. Automata's argument shows a reflection on Japanese's collective recognition of self, which evidently received much influence from Sartre's Existentialism, a western philosophy view, suggesting a globalizing trend in the Japanese cultural context. Automata also gives a fine example for narrative game and illustrates that video game could be a persuasive lesson of argument in reality as well. By applying this literary study on Automata, this thesis also aims to provide an example for similar narrative studies on video games in the future. / Graduate

Vi undersöker den narrativa stilen som Flower och Journey använder sig av. I denna narrativastil finns det varken dialog och text. Utifrån Flower och Journey skapade vi en designmetodsom ska finnas till som inspiration för utvecklare som vill testa denna stilen. Resultatet avundersökningen ger upphov till en designmetod som vi applicerar på vår gestaltning för atttesta den i en annan spel genre. Mycket av metoden är fokuserad på hur Flower och Journeygör då vi bara undersöker de två spelen. Vi skulle vilja göra en mer generell undersökning dåvi undersöker mer spel som också har ett narrativ utan dialog och text. / We study the narrative style that Flower and Journey uses. In this narrative style, there is nodialogue and text. Based on Flower and Journey, we created a design method that will be aninspiration for developers who want to test this style. The result of this bachelor thesis givesrise to a design method that we apply to our game idea this applies the method to anothergame genre. Much of the method is very focused on what Flower and Journey do when weonly examine these two games. We would like to do a more general study when we examinemore games that also have a narrative without dialogue and text.

In the fields of game design and interactive storytelling, it is of value to consider game mechanics, narrative design, and how they connect and influence each other. Dubbelman’s Narrative game mechanics theory (2016) started an argumentation that certain game mechanics can serve greater narrative power. This research sees a lack of practical considerations and game development guidelines from Dubbelman’s work and tries to conduct a theoretical framework on useful narrative and game design theories and practical considerations focusing on a subset of game mechanics, numerical narrative game mechanics. The framework covered an in-depth explanation of the process from mechanics to narratives, the role of the player during the narration process and related practices one can utilize, an analytical perspective of numerical elements and numerical mechanics, and ways to improve narratability and representation of contexts. Three case studies of existing games are also conducted to present the use of the framework and improve its applicability.

<p dir="ltr">Use of serious games and gamified applications for language learning have increased substantially over the past decade. They are an effective way to supplement language learning. These applications utilize a range of language learning methods such as grammar-translation, audio-lingual and task-based learning in combination. Task-based language learning particularly suits the typical gameplay elements of narratives and quests. Thus, this study aims to develop a serious game for learning Bengali, world’s 7th most spoken language. The literature in this area indicates that hubshaped quest landscape design is found to be most effective for game-based learning environments. So, the study implements a branching, hubshaped narrative for learning Bengali language.</p><p dir="ltr">This application also implemented a hidden object mechanism for vocabulary acquisition instead of traditional grammar-translation methods used in other language learning software. The prototype was assessed from user feedback in a qualitative manner across four broad heuristic categories comprising of learning, tutorials, engagement and cultural elements. In the process, the study sought to understand whether cultural context-based interventions in the narrative improve learner motivation.</p><p dir="ltr">The results show a positive impact of cultural elements on the learners’ motivation to progress. Further, the hidden object mechanism was received as a satisfactory method to learn foreign vocabulary. This form of interactive, narrative based educational application has the potential to supplement traditional lessons for foreign language acquisition.</p>