Andy Heather

Epoch-making words:

“I panicked”.

You love to see it. Congrats - well deserved! 🎉🍻

This news hit hard. Not just because John and Brenda are legends but also because I was senior narrative designer on this game early on and I am still incredibly excited to play it as a fan. Publishers, do not sleep on this one. 😉

This reads almost like one of those dark satirical ads from near-future sci-fi movies like Robocop.

How to use environmental storytelling to convey that a heat wave took place in the recent past, but is now over.

These mannequins melted during a heatwave in London in 1929. This photo was published in The Sphere, a British newspaper that ran from 1900 to the 1960s.

Please do!

Once again: real graffiti is often far more on the nose than most writers would ever dare to be when conveying the state of a fictional world.

"Okay, you can borrow the car but listen to the satnav. Don't go looking for one of your 'shortcuts'."

Don't tell me how to live my life, sign.

Let's play a game called 'think of a scenario in which this isn't a red flag'.

A: What did you do for your birthday?
B: ...

A: "I don't like thunderboxes. I don't trust them."
B: "Oh, come on. What's the worst that could happen?"

Ah, thank you sir. I'll be adding to it over time. Feel free to do the same if you find any good ones!

There's an inherent comedy in signs that say things like "Falling rocks" because there's little you can do about the warning other than pray for luck.

I like to imagine no one in this image is saying anything.

Character A: Won't a sign do? It's probably not gonna happen again.
Character B: No. We're taking no chances. I want it in bright red neon letters.

In environmental storytelling, your use of a signs can be literal or metaphorical depending on the nature of your story.

How many times does something have to happen before a sign is justified?

Beginning: Oh god, this cement isn't dry.

Middle: If I maintain my speed, I think I can power through this.

End: Enough. I tire of this madness. I'm leaving for Madagascar where I shall forage from the land and sleep in the trees.

I love these ones that expand in the mind, blooming into a wealth of mini-narratives each of which contorts itself to try and justify the image. Did the squirrel get inside? How many times? Was it one squirrel or multiple? What did they find to steal? Or was it the books they were after?

Two large gears meshing, the lower of which bears a sign reading "WARNING: Never put your fingers where you wouldn't put your dick."

Good advice for life, of course, but also a way to establish the tone of a workplace without needing to have any NPCs present.

Hi Neil, I was wondering: could the expansion of the universe be caused by the effects of velocity change elongating distances? As we approach the speed of light, distance decreases, so if we were slowing those distances would increase. Could the expansion be increasing as our velocity decreases?

A gigantic Soviet hammer & sickle emblem left to rust and decay on a roof that is being reclaimed by nature at the site of the Chernobyl disaster.

Often these vignettes suggest a narrative because of an ironic gap between the message and the medium of the message. For example, state totems of power left to decay tend to have that 'Ozymandias' feeling. They remind us that on a long enough timeline, tyrannical hubris always loses to entropy.

This one appears simple, then trips you up. This is Idlib, Syria after it was destroyed by Russian warplanes. But the smartphone-weilding youth seem more concerned with America's race issue. Is the internet shaping people's concerns? Or are trending topics more likely to catch the world's attention?

A great read if you're interested in how cities, buildings, and infrastructure would fail without maintenance is the book "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman. It gives a great idea of timeframes, which really helps when you want to communicate how long ago something happened.

A colorful and detailed graffiti mural with a thriving natural world on the left and a burning, apocalyptic hellscape on the right. Through the middle run the words, "OUR CLIMATE IS CHANGING".

"I don't know. Graffiti's been done and isn't that a little... on the nose?"

An image of a raized section of forest besides an untouched section. Running parallel with the dividing line is a river that was apparently used to stop the forest fire in its tracks.

Think of all the exposition an NPC doesn't have to say when this is your establishing shot.

Two dogs looking guiltily up at a camera, while shreds of toilet tissue litter the floor between them, along with a plastic packet that has been ripped open, and several partially chewed toilet rolls in amongst the evidence.

"Well, that is a very imaginative story, John, but I'm afraid I don't see a single shred of evidence to support your, frankly insulting, claims that my brother and I have ever damaged your property."

A white wall of a building with floodwater lapping at the bottom of the wall. Someone has scrawled in red, "I DON'T BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING" with the bottom of the message disappearing under the surface of the water.

There's a lot of narrative information conveyed to the player when they find gallows humor scrawled on walls rather than calls to action. It implies the local population has given up using public forums to try to galvanize and mobilize.