Scout Friends — Anti-Drug Narrative Game

The brief

The Scout Friends’ Association (童軍知友社) wanted a way to talk to young people about drug refusal that didn’t feel like being lectured at. The answer was a narrative board game: put players inside believable situations, let them make choices, and let the consequences do the teaching.

Educational games live or die on one tension — they have to satisfy the client’s learning objectives and be a game people genuinely want to play. Lean too far toward the message and it becomes a worksheet; lean too far toward fun and the point gets lost.

What we did

This is a ground-up original design commission:

• Translating goals into mechanics — turning the NGO’s anti-drug education objectives into decisions, story beats and outcomes that carry the message through play, not around it.
• Narrative design — writing scenarios that feel real to Hong Kong young people, so the choices land.
• Playtesting toward the audience — iterating with the actual age group it’s made for.

Why it matters

Designing for an NGO is a discipline of its own: the brief comes with non-negotiable goals, a specific audience, and a duty to handle a serious subject with care. This project shows we can take an institution’s objectives and design a game that serves them without becoming homework — the same skill a publisher needs when a title has to hit a theme, an age band and a market all at once.

In design through 2026 — full details and outcomes to follow on completion.