From Chaos to Coherence: How Echoes of Myth Found Its Narrative Identity

One of the core challenges in game narrative design is ludonarrative dissonance—a fancy way of saying that what the game tells the player through its story doesn't always match what its gameplay mechanics imply.

You know the classics:

• The noble hero on a quest to save the kingdom… while shamelessly looting every peasant’s home for spare change and healing potions.
• The urgent mission to prevent imminent catastrophe… which politely waits for the player to finish helping Old Man Gregory find his lost chickens.
• Lara Croft, shaken to her core after her first kill in a cutscene… and then casually mowing down an entire mercenary army five minutes later.

"I hate killing people… unless they are in my general direction."

Some of the best games avoid this disconnect entirely by making gameplay and narrative work in perfect sync. Hades nails this with its roguelike structure fitting the protagonist’s eternal struggle, while Dark Souls reinforces its themes of decay and repetition through world design and mechanics. But maintaining this harmony is demanding—especially in more complex, narratively driven worlds. The more realism a game aims for, the harder it becomes to keep its mechanics aligned. After all, full realism would often mean removing the fun.

So the real challenge isn’t eliminating ludonarrative dissonance—it’s figuring out the right compromise. How much disbelief can players willingly suspend before the game breaks its own illusion?

Echoes of Myth: A Journey of Narrative-Gameplay Alignment

I ran into this issue firsthand while developing Echoes of Myth—often in surprising ways. My initial vision was a traditional, narrative-driven RPG. Once I had early prototypes in place, I focused heavily on world and story development, aiming for a coherent, internally consistent narrative with minimal ludonarrative dissonance (though I didn’t even know the term at the time).

That approach quickly hit a wall. The sheer scope of handcrafted content required was completely unfeasible for a solo dev. It became clear I couldn’t execute my vision at the scale I wanted.

So, I pivoted—hard.

I dropped narrative development entirely for a while and focused purely on refining the game’s mechanics into a solid, fun experience. This led to the major roguelite-inspired shifts I’ve covered in previous blog posts. Only after a significant percentage of that pivot was in place did I return to worldbuilding, and that’s when I stumbled upon an approach that (apparently) is a tried-and-true method for minimizing ludonarrative dissonance:

Design the world based on what the game mechanics enable.

As soon as I embraced this, things started clicking. The core theme of Echoes of Myth—"The world is broken, and the gods have fallen silent"—was born from this gameplay-driven worldbuilding.

Since I had already committed to small, room-like levels, procedural generation, and portal-based traversal, I realized that I needed a world narrative that justified these mechanics. Otherwise, these elements would feel arbitrarily "gamey." This led to the idea that the world itself is fragmented, broken into isolated pieces connected by unstable portals. That, in turn, reinforced another key roguelite element: time is convoluted, allowing iterations and resets without breaking the story’s logic.

Layering Narrative onto Gameplay Mechanics

Once the fragmented world concept was locked in, the next step was defining its nature and progression. Drawing inspiration from Mother of Learning and Vernor Vinge’s zones of thought, I structured the world within a dying god’s body, with its zones of magic intensity aligning with gameplay progression.

• The player always starts from the outer rim, where magic is weakest.
• As they progress, magic becomes more unstable, intensifying towards the innermost core.
• The transition points between zones naturally became boss arenas, reinforcing act structure.

From there, many options opened up. I’ll dive deeper into the world lore in a separate post, but this foundation also helped shape another critical element: marketability.

At this stage, I realized my original concept didn’t have a strong marketing hook. The worldbreaking idea was solid, but it lacked something punchy. After brainstorming (and discussing it with my mentor), I leaned fully into the divine aspect:

"The world is broken, and the gods have fallen silent."

Gods had always been loosely present in the concept, but this tagline clicked so well that I doubled down. The most recent iteration of the game’s systems—powers, rewards, and map progression—now revolves around different gods and their divine domains.

While Hades has the protagonist constantly talking to the gods, Echoes of Myth leans into the mystery of their absence. Their power lingers, their influence is everywhere, and their treasures remain—but their fate is unknown. This shift tied the roguelite iteration mechanics even more tightly to the narrative, making each run feel like a genuine exploration of a divine catastrophe.

The Takeaway: Iteration is Key

I can’t even begin to count the number of small pivots along the way, but the biggest lesson has been this:

Unless you have a rock-solid narrative vision driving the game from day one, it’s often better to nail the core gameplay loop first, then iteratively shape the narrative around it.

By solidifying mechanics first, then layering in worldbuilding and marketing hooks in tandem, each iteration can refine both gameplay and story without them conflicting. If done right, they can actively reinforce each other.

Of course, there’s still plenty to do—ensuring consistency across narrative, mechanics, audio, and level design is an ongoing challenge, especially since systems design is my strength, not storytelling or visual art. But by approaching worldbuilding as an extension of mechanics, Echoes of Myth is becoming a game where gameplay and story don’t just coexist—they enhance each other.