Narrative Design Awards 2026 Shield and Laurels.
Hosted by Sight, developer and director of the upcoming ttrpg Guild66. 

 Winners from this Jam will be awarded with a certificate and the shield and laurels to adorn their shop pages, wherever they choose!
First Place Winners Will Win a 1-Year CraftPix Membership!

 This Year's Theme: 
Harvest

This Year, In Collaboration With

CraftPix.net is an online store, specializing in high-quality premium and free 2D game assets for game developers, indie studios, and hobbyists. This Year, the first place winning team will win a 1-year membership to CraftPix, with unlimited access to all game assets with commercial use. See more links at the bottom of the page!

This year, the Narrative Design Awards is working in Collaboration with Hip Flask Games!
This exceptional team of talented writers and artists are coming aboard to help judge the awards!

The Criteria:

Your entry will be judged on how the elements of your game support the story. Look at how your game's mechanical elements support the narrative, and consider how a character's growth enhances the over-arcing plot. Don't forget to consider your game's environment, and what it tells the player about the plot. Judges will consider the following:

• Story Narrative The story of your game, it's main plot.
• Environment Narrative The setting of the game.
• Mechanical Narrative How do the game mechanics work within your story.
• Character Development The journey your characters go through; what they're like at the beginning versus what they're like at the end.
• Narrative Flow Does your story flow nicely? Or does it feel choppy?
• Unpredictability vs Expectation Is there a balance between giving the audience what they expect (does it fit your genre for example) and have you given your audience twists and turns?
• Any alternative criteria a judge feels is relevant to specific entries.

How to Vote:

The Judges have the final say when it comes to winners, but that doesn't mean you don't get any input. Vote with your words! Interact with the content you like, interact on their submission page and in the community forum, express all the things you like about other people's work! Experience what they have created and tell us why you love it!

The Judges:

Sight has been in the world of production for many years, and has worked on a wide variety of projects, from feature length productions to animated infomercials. They have credits as an editor, videographer, host, writer, director and actor. They hold a masters in VFX and have developed multiple long-form literature pieces.

Emily Richardson graduated Oriel College, Oxford University with a degree in French and Linguistics, and has gone on to earn a masters degree in Applied Linguistics. Having studied various pieces of literature from around the world throughout the ages, she has gone on to produce multiple critical papers regarding literature and narrative portrayal. 

Deborah D’Antonio L.B. Almeida is a Narrative Designer and Writer with over 7 years of experience crafting interactive, branching narratives for video games, CYOA books, and TTRPG quests. Her credits include The Mystery of Witchhaven and SideQuest Vol 1, which were both crowdfunded in under one hour on Kickstarter! With a background in arts and audio-visual production, Deborah bridges the gap between the creative and technical sides of game development, approaching narrative through a cinematic lens, and strives to elevate production quality. When not dissecting games or building in UE, she volunteers as a Velocity coordinator for the IGDA Foundation, helping marginalized game developers access mentorships and resources for breaking into the games industry.

Sam Sanford is a writer and narrative designer working across mobile games, theatre, and audio drama. She has written for mobile titles with over 5 million downloads, as well as interactive theatre performed at Fringe festivals across the US, China, and the UK. Her work focuses on balancing rich, immersive worlds with giving players and audiences the freedom to explore and shape their own stories. Alongside her industry work, she is completing an MSt in Writing for Performance at Cambridge, where she enthusiastically overthinks what makes games unique and evangelizes about how interactive storytelling techniques are game-changing for any and all writers, regardless of medium.

Leilani Kaiser is a game writer, narrative designer, and a winner from the 2024 Narrative Design Awards game jam. She is a writer for a variety of different games and interactive fiction platforms. Her credits include multiple interactive visual novels for Pixelberry Studios’ Storyloom platform, the dating sim After Work, and the mobile game Modern Community. Leilani strives to create relatable stories and characters that resonate with players, as well as experiment with branching narratives and different writing tools. When she’s not typing away in a dialogue sheet, Leilani enjoys crocheting amigurumi, working out, and sipping on bubble tea with a good book.

Jeremiah Tjossem is a Narrative Designer and Writer working for Hip Flask Games and has spent the last two years working on branching dialogue and interactive storytelling. Before his entry into the world of game design, he earned a MS in Communications and Marketing from the University of Denver and spent seven years before that studying 13th century French Heretics and Creative Writing. When not working on untangling a web of branching dialogue, he spends his time reading through historical manuscripts and playing TTRPG’s.

Sam Cast is the lead writer and creative director on The Bureau of Fantastical & Arcane Affairs, the CCO of indie studio Hip Flask Games, and was a contributing writer on the upcoming RPG Ledgerbound. In addition, he has also written 2 unpublished novels, though games are his favorite storytelling medium. When he isn't waist deep in a thousand-hour project, he hikes, plays RPGs, and reads thought-provoking literature he mostly doesn't enjoy but he has convinced himself is good for him.

The Rules

• No Adult themes or content, try to keep submissions as PG as possible.
• Respect the rules of itch.io and do not submit banned or prohibited content.
• Submissions of games made prior to this jam are accepted, but games created during the jam will take priority during judging. This does not mean games made prior will not be considered. For example, in the event of a tie or distinction of marking, the game made during the jam will take priority.
• Harassment and offensive language targeting anyone and/or their submissions will not be tolerated, and will result in warnings and bans depending on the severity of the events.
• Due to the quantity of submissions, feedback is not guaranteed. Though every effort will be taken to provide feedback on every entry possible.
• If a paid entry is submitted, a free version or alternative way to access the content will need to be provided either directly to a judge account or on the submissions page. All entries can only be judged based on the level of access provided. In the event that a free-to-download/free-to-play version is not submitted, the submission cannot be judged.
• You must give the judges permission to discuss your submission and contact you in order for them to experience your work, mark it, and contact you should you be finalist. Without this permission, we cannot contact you to deliver the results. Therefore, without appropriate permissions granted, we cannot assess your entry and it will not be judged.
• You can enter any game format, and we accept submissions with a focus on Linear Narrative, Non-Linear Narrative, Quest Narrative and/or Viewpoint Narrative.
• Keep this a positive space!

AI Generated Content

• AIArt is prohibited. There is a wealth of free and paid content available to creators, check the Discord for help finding resources.
• This is a narrative competition, your writing must be your own. AI story/plot/narrative generation is prohibited
• AI generation to quickly generate or check scripting/coding is permitted.
• Autorigging software or online platforms for 3D or 2D assets is permitted.

Due to popular demand, I'm super pleased to announce we have a discord server!
Join us here, let's go!
https://discord.gg/umdy8hqQ5R 

Follow the progression of Guild66 for free at 
https://www.patreon.com/c/Guild66?vanity=user

CraftPix
website - https://craftpix.net/ 
Free library - https://craftpix.net/freebies/
bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/craftpix.bsky.social
twitter (x) - https://x.com/craftpix_net
facebook - https://www.facebook.com/craftpix/