From Difficult Stories to Playable Experiences
Why As Long As You’re Here works — and how you can start doing the same
A look at how As Long As You’re Here turns a difficult subject into an interactive experience, and how simple tools can help shape personal stories into playable forms.
Some stories are difficult to express directly, especially when they involve sensitive or misunderstood conditions. Turning them into a game allows the audience to engage with the experience itself—shifting the focus from observing and feeling pity to navigating, understanding, and reflecting through interaction.
Why this story is a good candidate for a game
As Long As You’re Here is a strong candidate because the experience of Alzheimer’s is not something that can be clearly explained — it is something that must be felt through breakdown, confusion, and uncertainty. These are not moments that rely on melodrama, but on subtle shifts in perception. A game can translate this into interaction, allowing the player to experience instability directly rather than being told about it.
At the same time, the story is grounded in ordinary, everyday life rather than dramatic events. It is about small moments — routines, familiar spaces, and personal perception — which makes it difficult to express through traditional storytelling without over-explaining or exaggerating. This kind of story benefits from a medium that can hold subtlety and let meaning emerge through experience rather than being directly narrated or explained.
How the game makes this work
The strength of As Long As You're Here comes from turning a lived condition into something the player can learn through doing.
The game begins with simple, everyday actions. Through these, the player forms a mental model of how the world works. This happens naturally — by interacting, not by being told.
As time passes, this mental model begins to break. What once felt reliable no longer behaves the same way. The player has to adjust — learning new patterns while unlearning what they previously depended on. This reflects the experience of Alzheimer’s as a continuous shift, rather than a single moment of loss.
The meaning of the game comes from this process. It is not delivered through explanation, but through the moment when the player realises their understanding no longer holds — when expectation and experience no longer match.
At the same time, the world remains ordinary — familiar spaces and everyday actions — which keeps the experience grounded and allows these shifts to feel subtle but real.
In this way, the game expresses Alzheimer’s not by explaining it, but by letting the player move through a world where their own understanding is constantly shifting.
How to start turning your story into a playable experience
Not everyone knows how to turn their personal experience into a story, but most people can describe a situation or a feeling. To turn that into something playable, the goal is not to write it perfectly, but to see how it unfolds when someone moves through it.
Start by breaking your story into small moments. What does the person encounter? What can they do? What changes after that? Instead of thinking in terms of plot, think in terms of situations and responses.
A useful way to begin is to create a single “alpha path” — one simple, linear sequence of moments that represents the core experience. It does not need to be complete or polished. Its purpose is to connect fragmented ideas into one continuous flow, so you can see how the experience builds from start to end.
Simple tools like Twine are enough for this. They allow you to map out moments, connect them, and test how one leads to another. By building an alpha path, you are not trying to cover every possibility, but to understand the main emotional journey of your story.
Even in a game like As Long As You’re Here, where there is little to no dialogue, this process is still valid. You are not recreating the final experience, but testing how understanding changes over time — where the player forms expectations, and where those expectations begin to break.
Closing thought
Anyone can be a game designer when it comes to telling their own story. You don’t need to start with mechanics — only a situation, and a way for someone to move through it.
If you’re curious to explore this further, join us on 14th April — reserve your spot here — to hear from the creator of As Long As You’re Here in person, and learn how a personal experience can become a playable one.