Virginia is a first-person single-player mystery adventure game developed and published by Variable State for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4, and Xbox One in 2016. Given its mature themes around conspiracy and violence, it seems like the game was designed for late teen and adult audiences. The game tells the story of a rookie FBI agent named Anne Tarver investigating the disappearance of a boy in the town of Kingdom, Virginia in 1992. In this game, the player’s path through the environment, mechanics that pace the story reveals, and the rhythmic loop of exploring and discovering clues all work together to fully integrate narrative and gameplay. More specifically, Virginia’s architecture is carefully constructed to guide the player through a series of revelations that unlock the larger mystery arc, demonstrating how designers can create a compelling, player-driven storytelling experience.
Virginia is a great example of environmental storytelling, using the physical space of each scene to embed clues and narrative threads for the player to uncover. From the opening moments in the FBI field office, the game establishes a clear design language where key story details are hidden in plain sight, waiting for an observant player to discover them. Subtle touches like the post-it note on Agent Halperin’s desk reading “Raincoat Killer – connection?” hint at a wider history to the case, thereby making the player feel like an active participant in the unfolding mystery.
This careful curation of the environment extends to the macro level of Virginia’s scene structure. For example, in my playthrough, in the third scene, I arrived at the house of the missing boy’s parents. By poking around the cluttered environment, I spotted a torn magazine page with a strange symbol tucked under a dresser. Later, that same symbol appeared in a crime scene photograph at the FBI office. In that moment, I felt a chill as I realized these small details were breadcrumbs leading me to a larger conspiracy. This evidence demonstrates that each “vignette” takes place in a distinct location corresponding to a beat in the case — a witness interview at the local diner, a search of the missing person’s room, a secret meeting in an abandoned barn. Therefore, level design is specifically built around gating progress through the story, requiring the player to explore and exhaust all the meaningful interactions in one space before proceeding to the next.
Moreover, Virginia’s designers clearly use the environment to create player-driven revelations that connect the dots of the plot. The game’s streamlined mechanics support this structure — the player can only zoom in on important objects, keeping them focused on key evidence. For example, in the image above from my playthrough, the player is pointing to a photo (evidence) that has reappeared multiple times in various scenes, pushing them to closely observe that photo in hopes of further understanding the story. Some adventure games clutter their scenes with meaningless interactions, but Virginia’s limited, purposeful action set ensures the player is always engaging with something narratively significant, even if it doesn’t seem that way at the beginning.
Pacing is also key to how Virginia integrates gameplay and story. Each vignette location contains just enough clues and character beats to propel the player to the next scene, establishing a consistent rhythm of mystery and discovery. A typical scene plays out like this: “I arrived at the abandoned barn, using my flashlight to search the dark corners. After finding a key hidden in a lockbox, I could open the trapdoor to the cellar, where I discovered a conspiracy board mapping out a network of corruption tied to the central mystery. With this revelation, the scene faded out, and I moved on to investigating the next lead.”
This core loop of exploring, finding, and narratively “leveling up” to the next scene creates a steady momentum that makes Virginia feel like an interactive movie. The player is swept up in the flow as each new location reveals another piece of the mystery, leading to a pretty cathartic climax where all the threads come together. Mechanically, it’s relatively simple — you move around a space, interact with objects, and transition to a new scene — but narratively, it’s really effective at creating a sense of player-driven discovery.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the game, one thing I wanted as a player and designer was even more of an emphasis on player-driven discovery. For example, an optional note-taking or evidence-gathering mechanic would have potentially created a deeper sense of investment in the mystery. As the player explores each environment and uncovers new clues or narrative threads, they could have the ability to jot down notes, compile evidence, and formulate their own theories about the overarching mystery. This added layer of interaction would not only increase the player’s intellectual investment in piecing together the puzzle but also foster a deeper emotional connection. Imagine if after discovering the mysterious symbol in the missing boy’s room, you could manually add it to your evidence board and speculate about its connection to other clues. As you progress through subsequent scenes, revisiting and updating your notes could create a powerful feeling of unraveling the mystery through your own deductions, creating more player agency. If this mechanic could culminate in a climax where the player’s final theory or evidence board directly impacts how the mystery is resolved, the game could offer a more personalized payoff for the player’s investigative efforts.
