Edda

Edda is a narrative RPG adventure game. The player controls Krude Operator—a young orc who dreams of being a reporter. After his clan appoints him Legend Bringer, he sets off on an epic quest to get an entry level job as a freelance journalist…and maybe save the universe. The core loop is: explore locations, interview NPCs, fight monsters, and get published. A language-based magic system lets Krude reshape reality through writing as he grows in power. The pen is literally mightier than the sword.

Gamers will recognize the turn-based combat, exploration puzzles, and search action platforming, but the journalism mechanic is the heart of the design. Players can report honestly, selectively, or fabricate entirely, and the world responds. The game asks whether a good journalist can also be a good person, and refuses easy answers.

At its core, this is an adventure about collective trauma and the difficulty of recovery when the wound itself can’t be fully remembered. The world’s inciting catastrophe magically altered how memory forms for every living creature, who now carry a cultural PTSD they can’t understand, unable to trust their own recollection or each other. The heroes will discover some truths, but the game’s deeper argument is that not every wound can be diagnosed and closed. What they find instead is a path toward recovery.

This theme is personal from my own experience with childhood trauma and PTSD. The work of therapy and education that came after is the emotional spine of the project. Storytelling was the framework through which I processed that journey, and is expressed through play in Edda.

My background in media studies and ten years as a television writer and producer inspired the journalism mechanics. Krude’s career is not a fantasy device but an extension of my passion for media ethics and literacy. My graduate work in experience design, integrated media, and creative writing gave me the theoretical framework for designing narrative play.

Edda has been in development as a living creative research practice through my home TTRPG campaigns for nearly a decade. 59 players have inhabited it—with two groups running biweekly as of this writing. Gaming is in my DNA. My uncle taught me to DM when I was seven, and his D&D campaign (with my parents as players) has been running continuously since 1st Edition in the 70s. Through collaborative world-building I learn what Edda believes, what it fears, and what it wants to say by watching players live inside it.

The vertical slice demo covers the first few chapters of narrative, combat, and introduces the journalism mechanics. The funded period provides for writing and revisions, and fosters full-time collaborative development with artists, composers, and programmers. The goal is a complete game that delivers on the full emotional and mechanical argument of the work: Storytelling is a form of power, memory is the first casualty of trauma, and recovery is possible even when the wound can’t be fully named. Keep your friends close, and your journalistic integrity closer!