Narrative-Driven Games

MISFITS is going to be a narrative-driven, episode based, Interactive Graphic-Adventure game. In gaming, Graphic adventure can be a relatively ambiguous term, covering a broad spectrum of genre. What I'm interested is in the kind of game that focus on story-telling and evolve through player choices. Different from traditional point-and-click games, the Player choices and consequences are integral to how the narrative unfolds and in character development.

Player can decide whether the Character(Avatar)s are kitten-saving archetypal protagonists, or the kitten-eating kind. Player choices affect the next immediate story-events that follow at that particular stage. Note that there would always be a definite underlying narrative arc to the game, but the player's journey from beginning to end can take different paths. (We're not talking about the kind of games that give Player an illusion of freedom, for eg. by giving a vast open world to roam around or option to switch between multiple characters, all the while still following an inflexible storyline to progress through the game.)

The problem with this approach ofcourse would be the extra effort required, since every alternate paths need to be written and designed with same level of consistency(in gameplay and quality), even if not every player sees it. Below is a rough flow-chart I created for a simple scenario, when Avatar has sneaked in behind an AI opponent.

I've been trying to look into as many games as I can, which fall under this genre. Almost all the games from  TellTale follow such narrative structure. I was able to get my hands on the PC version of their Jurassic Park and Walking Dead titles. (Its really interesting to see their journey from JP to WD, where many complicated gameplay elements from JP kind of evolved into an enjoyable and easier one in the critically acclaimed WD.) I also checked out few of their games in ios platform, Tales from Borderland, Wolf Among us, and Game of Thrones. There are also some great titles from other studios which I did'nt get the chance to actually play, like Beyond: Two Souls, The Last of Us which all are exclusively for PS console. Some other notable games are : To the Moon, Dreamfall, Heavy Rain, LA Noire.

Although I have'nt played through all these games, I've managed to watch a lot of their gameplay videos. And with some notes I've taken from other articles about narrative-driven games, I have compiled some "DONT"s to be kept in mind while designing such games :

• Too much junk - Too many objects to check or too many events to participate, which may not have any influence on the game progression. A plethora of cut-scenes, especially without an option to skip, could also be irritating to the Player. 
• Demanding too much precision - Some games put Users in situations where they have to perform real-time key combinations with utmost precision and urgency. Or situations when a correct choice needs to be made by sheer luck or guessing. Usually in such scenarios, Player keeps re-playing from checkpoints over and over till he/she has a foreknowledge of the correct play to follow - which essentially beats the purpose of interactive gaming.
• Hunting for Hotspots - Player should'nt have to painfully click every which where on the screen till he/she 'accidentally' stumbles upon a hotspot (Clue, an object or an event-trigger). Player should basically be made to feel smart, not lucky or persistent.
• Puzzles - If there are puzzles, they should'nt be a formality. Solving them should move the narrative forward, ie. puzzles should be part of the story itself.