The Forgotten City Wins AGDA Narrative Excellence Award

The 2021 Australian Game Developers Awards were just held on Twitch, and our favorite time-loop mystery adventure snagged a well-deserved award for Narrative Excellence. We said in our review of Modern Storyteller’s The Forgotten City that it had some of the best writing we’d ever seen in a video game — which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, given the studio’s name — and it’s great to see the game get some well-deserved accolades for its stellar writing.

Studio founder Nick Pearce accepted the award on behalf of Modern Storyteller. He expressed his belief that video games are the ultimate storytelling media, and acknowledged the importance of the programmers, artists, and musicians who do the work that supports a video game’s narrative.

The other nominees for the Narrative Excellence award were Topography by Cecile Richard, and Choices that Matter: And The Sun Went Out from Tin Man Games/Screwtape Studios. (You can play Topography online for free!)

Here’s what the AGDA judges had to say about The Forgotten City:

The dialogue and characters are excellent, with each feeling important, with their own contained lives separate of the player.

Each new bit of information about the world is presented through natural-feeling dialogue with NPCs and is revealed in a way that doesnt’ overload you with data all at once.

We couldn’t agree more! If you want to watch the AGDAs, you can still do so on Twitch.