I’ve been thinking a bit recently about stories. People love stories, they love interesting characters, and they love drama, and these are all things that the Old Testament is chock full of – so surely, Bible-based Christian video games ought to be some of the best out there for drawing players in with engaging narratives. I’ve made a little YouTube video discussing the issue:
I wonder if often we end up using the Bible stories as a setting for our games, but essentially ripping the characters and the little details out of the narrative, and throwing away all the good stuff. What you can end up with is something that’s a derivative Mario clone, only not as good, which clearly isn’t in anybody’s interests.
The more I’ve worked on Ebenezer, my Old Testament adventure game, the more I’ve realised I need to get the drama within my game to line up as closely as possible with the central drama in the passage. The tension within 1 Samuel 8-12 seems to centre on the character of Saul, whom God names as Israel’s first king, and whether people are going to trust him to deliver them or not. There’s a bunch of people, “some worthless fellows”, who wonder how on earth this guy is going to be able to save them – and it lots of ways they’re right to doubt! So I’ve worked hard to make that the central tension of the game, and I hope that the result is going to be something really fun and engaging.
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