If a game takes place in a world that’s not our own, one concept tends to dominate the discussion of its plot: Lore. What has happened, what has been prophesied, who did what, where, and why. This is understandable: a great deal of theme and narrative setup can be crammed into ambient text like item descriptions or in-game books. And people like deep worlds. When the author has put some meat on those narrative bones, it’s naturally engaging.

There is a temptation within this to reveal all. You wrote it, so you should put it somewhere, right? In a book off in the corner, or in the text of some obscure side-quest. This is one of the most destructive thoughts you can have. Fiction is not a textbook: it needn’t explain every little thing. Allow some mystery to creep in, and people will take your background world more seriously. Leaving gaps lets people wonder.

In and of itself this is an enjoyable way to interact with fiction, but it can also lead to gap-filling. People naturally want to understand things, solve mysteries. If you leave a few breadcrumbs out, whether they lead to an answer or not, people will pick up on them. Consciously or not, they’ll put together something that seems connected by the patterns they notice. That something will be tailor-fit to their preferences and interests, because it’s their own work. In a sense, the gaps encourage a kind of long-distance collaborative storytelling.

To me it seems that the most obvious example of this structure is the Souls games. There are so many holes in those worlds that you could fill a suite of night classes on interpreting them and figuring out how to connect the disparate pieces. This is, rightly, a well-observed phenomenon. However, the extent of it has a big drawback: with so many holes in such important places, people feel compelled to “solve” the narrative. It leads to people taking conclusive, sure stances that sound less like interpretation and more like a list of historical events.

The way to keep this from happening is to keep the uncertainty simmering beneath whatever plot threads are occurring. Your goals must be concrete and clear, but the rest can be as muddy as you want. A good example of this approach is the main-quest of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. There is virtually no certainty, no clear unbroken fact in any of the setup. Whether or not you’re a hero of legend, what exactly that would mean if it were true, who caused all the mess you have to deal with in the first place, what it means for the broader setting. All incredibly unknowable. But since you have a clear goal at every step of the way, the noise of confusion washes into the background. It becomes stage dressing, something to think about a bit as you wander towards your next objective. Players aren’t expected to puzzle out what the goal is, they’re expected to kill the evil god living in the volcano.

Kenoma has the same core expectation of players. By the time you’re really interacting with the pieces of the wider world I’ve strewn about, your main goals are clearly-defined and easy to focus your efforts on. There is a difference, however, in the structure’s use. Morrowind uses uncertainty to add intrigue to the main questline, within a larger world that is more or less explicable. In Kenoma, much more of the setting itself is left implied. Fossilized, in a sense. Composed of ancient fragments that gesture to a complete whole, but never quite tell you enough on their own. The most you’ll get at once is a small piece, along the lines of this item description: “An alloy of tin and copper, made far sturdier by the forging process. Bronze has been symbolic of listless unbelonging and desolation for thousands of years.”

Designing a world within this space is both restrictive and freeing. There is less total space for your world when it’s intended to be filled with holes and implication, and you may have to cut elements that you find compelling. I’ve had quite a few ideas for interesting background groups and individuals that were cut, both for time and to make sure the vagueness remained intact. At the same time, the process of writing is often easier because you can just choose not to explain things. It’s quite a nice option, especially if that thing has little relevance to anything you care about narratively.

But you must be judicious in what narrative you choose to care for. It’s a delicate balancing act, both in detail and in tone. Leaning too far towards spurious or important information will leave the setting ill-defined and wasteful, or without any mystery. Too much frivolity or solemnity will make the setting seem weightless or joyless. Ideally, striking this balance presents a world that feels real without actually having to create every detail of such a thing. Could you imagine the work that would take?

As a side-note: the lack of explanation and intentional gaps in the setting have another, hidden advantage. Plot holes are often indistinguishable from intentional gaps. It’s quite useful in later stages of narrative development.

One of the hardest things about a piecemeal setting like this is that you can’t know how well it conveys itself as the writer. You know exactly how one is “supposed to” close the gaps, what was supposed to be in all the holes you’ve made. Do the pieces coalesce? Can people be expected to make the leaps of logic you’re anticipating? They will, of course, always make ones you didn’t anticipate.

The best way to answer this worry is to have someone else come along and figure it out for themselves. Seeing people experience your world is quite illustrative, and getting them to describe their idea of how the whole thing comes together is an ideal way to know whether or not it works. Hopefully Kenoma works. I believe it does.

KENOMA on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2933260/Kenoma_Action_Without_Action/

KENOMA on itch: https://brukholevin.itch.io/kenoma-action-without-action

KENOMA press-kit [for journalists]: https://www.brukholevin.com/kenoma_presskit.html

BrukhoLevin Mailing List: https://www.brukholevin.com/mailinglist.html