Epic Stories in New Media: Adapting a Persian Epic into a Video Game Prototype

Project Overview

This project is a narrative-driven video game prototype developed as an exploratory solo project. I adapted a segment of the Persian epic Shahnameh into a visual novel with deck-building combat mechanics. The project investigates how literary narratives change when translated into interactive media, and how player agency reshapes the experience of story.

Intent and Motivation

I have long been drawn to storytelling, particularly to forms that actively engage the mind. While everything started with storybooks, it soon expanded to cartoons, animation, and eventually video games. I noticed that many people shared the same inclination; they desired most of all to be able to interact with the stories. That is why I became interested in digital storytelling and how stories evolve and change as they move across media. While focusing my academic studies on children’s literature, I was introduced to transmedia studies, which provided a theoretical framework for ideas I had already been intuitively exploring. This project emerged from a desire to experiment with that process directly. I wanted to take a literary story and adapt it into a video game, not as a simple translation, but as an inquiry into what is gained, lost, or transformed when narrative enters an interactive space.

Influences and Design

My familiarity with digital storytelling, particularly video games, has been shaped by extensive exposure to the medium, both as a player and as an observer of its narrative techniques. One of the most influential works for this project was Hades, an independent game that combines action-based gameplay with visual novel storytelling. Hades reimagines Greek mythology through a contemporary lens. What makes Hades especially compelling is its success on multiple levels. It is critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and widely discussed not only in gaming communities but also in literary and academic contexts. This reception demonstrated that interactive adaptations of classical mythology can resonate deeply with modern audiences when they are thoughtfully designed. Rather than attempting to replicate Hades, I approached it as a case study to inform my own design decisions.

Cultural Adaptation

With these influences in mind, the next question was one of source material. Inspired by Hades’s engagement with Greek mythology, I turned toward my own cultural heritage: Persian epic literature. Among these works, the Shahnameh stands as the most significant. Composed over a thousand years ago, it occupies a role in Persian culture similar to that of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the Western canon, weaving together myth, history, and moral philosophy. The Shahnameh is rooted in Persian cultural values and Zoroastrian cosmology, particularly the struggle between forces of light and darkness. Despite its literary and historical importance, it remains relatively unknown outside of Iran and even among younger readers due to its archaic language. This made it an ideal candidate for adaptation. By reimagining a segment of the Shahnameh as a visual novel, I had the opportunity to build upon a rich literary foundation while promoting it. 

The greatest hero of Shahname’s stories is Rostam, a paladin who fights and defeats the forces of darkness. However, he did not suit the needs of this project. I wanted a younger protagonist, one who is smaller in scale, capable of making mistakes, and able to grow through failure. In fact, I wanted a group of characters that bound together on a shared journey for a common goal but for different motivations. For this reason, I chose Sohrab, Rostam’s estranged son, as the main playable character. 

In my reimagining, Sohrab defeats Rostam in battle, only to learn the truth of their relationship afterward. Rostam is then taken by an evil force, and Sohrab, previously blinded by his pursuit of glory, is confronted with guilt and responsibility. His journey becomes one of redemption as he seeks to rescue his father and face the consequences of his actions. Another key character is Gordafarid, a woman warrior who, in my view, stands as one of the most compelling figures in the Shahnameh. She represents righteousness, loyalty to her people, and moral clarity. As Sohrab’s first companion and a former rival, she introduces tension and ethical grounding to the narrative.

Gameplay and interactivity

One of the central challenges of this project was determining how gameplay and narrative could meaningfully interact. Video games are complex and resource-intensive to produce. As such, part of my experiment involved identifying an approach that could be both creatively effective and realistically achievable for an indie developer adapting literary material. 

Visual novels offered an ideal narrative framework. Engines such as Ren’Py provide accessible, open-source tools for creating dialogue-driven experiences with branching choices. This format allows for dialogues and choices. And choices in turn allow more agency for players, and creation of consequences for their actions, reinforcing their sense of participation in the story. In my design, players are taking the role of a character in the story, namely Sohrab. They read his dialogue as well as other characters’ dialogues, but in important moments, they are given agency to choose what he says. These choices influence narrative paths, character relationships, and potential endings, reinforcing the player’s sense of agency and participation. To deepen this interactivity, a relationship system would be in place in which player choices affect how companions perceive Sohrab. Positive or negative interactions alter relationship values, unlocking narrative consequences. If a relationship deteriorates too far, a companion may leave the group altogether. This system emphasizes accountability and reinforces the emotional stakes of player decisions.

However, visual novels are not enough to engage many people precisely because they remind them of books and require a lot of reading. Here, gameplay mechanics play a crucial role, not necessarily through complexity, but through meaningful interaction. Many successful games rely on relatively simple systems that are carefully tuned to support the experience. For this project, I chose a deck-building combat system, a genre that naturally complements the idea of choice and consequence. Players begin with a limited set of cards, but as the narrative unfolds, their dialogue choices and relationships with other characters influence which new cards become available. In this way, narrative decisions directly shape their deck’s strength. This structure reinforces the importance of player choices while encouraging replayability, as different narrative paths lead to different playthrough outcomes.

The Entrepreneurial Perspective

An important goal of this project is its entrepreneurial aspect. For the cultural entrepreneurship discussed earlier, financial sustainability is essential. Here, the concept of digital storyworlds becomes particularly relevant. The fact that a children’s book has its own animation, video game, physical toys, and fan pages goes beyond only tapping into those markets; it allows for a chain of momentum where children move from reading to watching, to playing, and more. It promotes a movement between the media. This phenomenon is evident in contemporary media landscapes, where adaptations across platforms often reinforce one another. Video games frequently experience renewed interest following film or television adaptations, and vice versa. Importantly, not all of these adaptations require large-scale investment. Thoughtful, smaller-scale digital projects can serve both as artistic expressions and as promotional gateways into larger narrative worlds. In this sense, the project explores how literary adaptation into interactive media can function not only as a creative experiment but also as a sustainable model for sharing underrepresented cultural stories with broader audiences.

Process Notes and Authorship

The assets used in this prototype were created with the assistance of generative AI, but strictly because I did not have the resources to hire artists. I am strongly against replacing any kind of artistic creation with AI content. This project was non-commercial and exploratory in nature. For any real project I aim to work on, I will not use generative AI, as I believe real works of art are created by real artists. It is also important to note that the character designs were guided by my own conceptual sketches and aesthetic decisions, which the AI tools were used to refine rather than originate.

Reflections

While video games may seem to allow more agency at first glance, most of them still follow a largely linear, predetermined path. However, this project showed me how powerful even the illusion of agency can be. The smallest increase in player control, such as simply being able to move as the character, can make players feel included in the story. There are, however, ways to meaningfully increase agency, particularly through choice systems. Even a simple dialogue option can be designed to lead to significant consequences, which players often find highly rewarding. Although these choice branches are limited, they remain effective in shaping the experience.

More often than not, audiences are disappointed when a story they love is poorly adapted, which highlights how difficult adaptation truly is. While I, too, believe in faithful adaptations, this project required a reimagining. Games like Hades demonstrate that multiple interpretations of a beloved story can coexist successfully. Because this game was aimed at a younger audience, I had to adapt the narrative to make it more interactive and relatable.

I also encountered the challenge of working within the visual novel genre, which limits how much story can be told without becoming tedious. Through this, I learned that telling a simpler story with richer details is often more effective than rushing through a complex one. Working solo further emphasized the importance of scope management. Although I began with many ideas, I learned to prioritize what was both meaningful and realistically implementable, often abandoning or reshaping concepts along the way. This, I believe, is one of the most important lessons for any indie studio undertaking similar projects. Ultimately, while it is true that adapting into another medium, in this case, a video game, is a difficult task, this project showed me that it is far from impossible. It primarily requires passion and a well-defined scope.