Drawing your players into empathizing with the plight of characters in your game is a significant challenge for any developer, and it's one that doesn't get much easier to solve no matter how much time, money or people you throw at it.
In fact, having limited resources might actually make it a more straightforward problem to tackle. For example, Paper Dino Software's Save the Date employed a simple nonlinear story structure and clever writing to create a surprisingly emotional experience, netting it a nomination for the 2014 IGF Awards.
As part of the GDC 2014 Independent Games Summit, designer Chris Cornell spoke at length about the specific techniques and that went into crafting that experience and offered his fellow developers a few suggestions for creating more games that use player agency to foster emotional investment.
It's an excellent, forthright talk on narrative design, and the free video (embedded above) of 'Lessons in Building Player Investment: Paper Dino's Save the Date' is now available to watch here on the GDC Vault.
Video: How Save the Date wins hearts through nonlinear narrative
As part of the GDC 2014 Independent Games Summit, Save the Date creator Chris Cornell spoke about the specific techniques he used to build a surprisingly emotional nonlinear narrative game.