By Emily Mannard
As ATEQ has explored across other ELA Today contributions—like our special videogame-based edition released in May 2022—videogames hold incredible potential to foster youths’ literacy learning, particularly when it comes to engaged discussions. Over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to harness this potential within high school ELA classrooms and digitally-oriented programming in community centres. Across these experiences, I’ve directed my attention towards ‘storydriven’ videogames that feature robust storylines, characterizations and relevant themes for ELA-based talk.
*Small warning* The catalogue of these storydriven games is expansive so I suggest filtering through elements like desired genre, intended audience and player ratings. This can be done through game-based websites like Steam, Metacritic, GameInformer, Destructoid or GamesRadar+. You can also access user-generated walkthroughs and guides on websites like GameFAQs, GamePressure, JayIsGames (indie/mobile games) and Youtube (e.g. gameranx for short reviews).
The table below provides a few examples of popular storydriven videogames that feature adolescent protagonists and themes commonly explored in YA novels. While the genre, content and playthrough experience across these titles varies greatly, they all provide unique opportunities for critical and engaging discussions.
| YA Storydriven Videogame Examples |
| Oxenfree (2016)Players follow a group of teenagers in their quest to escape an island controlled by a vengeful supernatural presence. This dangerous endeavor pushes the adolescent protagonists to reflect upon and come to terms with the obstacles they’ve faced in life, such as addressing familial issues, coping with loss and rejection, and overcoming anxieties about the future. |
| Life Is Strange (2015)Players follow 18-year-old photography student Max Claufield as she discovers her ability to rewind time. While attempting to control her newfound power, maintain complex friendships, and navigate struggles with mental health, Max must simultaneously save the town from a violent predator and an impending natural disaster. |
| Beyond: Two Souls (2013)Players follow Jodie Holmes as she navigates adolescent life while physically linked to an invisible entity with telekinetic powers. Jodie must learn to control her powers and overcome increasingly difficult obstacles – like being enrolled as an 18-year-old CIA operative – as she journeys to find meaningful connections and establish her own path in life. |
| Telltale Games: The Walking Dead (2012), The Wolf Among Us (2013), Batman Series (2016), Guardians of the Galaxy (2017), Minecraft: Story Mode (2017) Telltale Games have produced a variety of narrative adventures based on popular multimedia series. These games are interesting because they present alternative perspectives on beloved franchises, many of which are still popular with students in 2025. Each series is presented through a variety of short episodes, which makes them more manageable to play in smaller bursts. Our favourite of the above listed is The Walking Dead! (Game description contributed by Nick Williams) |
| Until Dawn (2015) and other Dark Anthology GamesUntil Dawn follows a group of college-age teenagers as they spend winter break at the ski lodge owned by one of their friends. Although the content might be a little mature for elementary/younger high school students, the game does a great job of exploring and subverting the tropes seen in many horror movies. The relationships between different characters are interesting, and player choices actually determine who makes it through the fateful weekend and who meets an oftentimes grisly fate. (Game description contributed by Nick Williams) |
I recently had the opportunity to play through one of these titles, Life Is Strange (2015), in a gaming club I developed with adolescents at a community center in Côte-des-Neiges. As we met each week to play through a chapter of the game, we engaged in organic discussions around important (and often difficult to broach) topics like mental health, substance abuse and police corruption. While these discussions certainly stemmed from the game’s content, its format also naturally lent itself to collaboration and talk.
As depicted in the gameplay screenshots below, storydriven videogames like Life Is Strange push players to make textual decisions to advance the storyline. While these games are often played individually, transitioning them into a group context (like our gaming club or a classroom) opens the space to build rich communities of talk. A stream of near constant communication is required when only one player can hold the controller but decisions are being made collaboratively. Better yet, players need to justify why their choice should be selected when a textual decision isn’t unanimous, opening the space for lively debate and collective verbal brainstorming.
These opportunities for talk can also be scaffolded through discussion-based questions like: How do we think this choice will impact our avatar or the story as a whole?, or What are the moral implications of this decision, both within and beyond the game? Teachers can also turn to more structured approaches to fostering and evaluating talk around gameplay by utilising lesson plans available through the ATEQ Resources page or other websites like HeyListenGames.