The AnswerVerse Conversation Template is an open source lightweight Unity-based system for building interactive narrative scenes. Built on top of VNEngine, it includes a cast of characters and locations within a growing shared universe.
Originally created to support the development of the Answer Campus game series, the template enables creators to write branching, visual novel-style scenes that integrate seamlessly with the AnswerVerse: a fictional college setting designed to explore identity, belonging, and social complexity through play.
Designed for student writers, educators, and academic game labs, the system offers a fast on-ramp to game development along with research-ready integration via Open Game Data. Whether you're teaching, prototyping or storytelling, the template offers a grounded, extensible way to prototype meaningful, playable conversations.
Projects Using the Template
Answer Campus: First Semester
NERDLab's flagship title. In this episode, the player starts their first year at A&C Univerity. They navigate new friendships while settling into life on campus. In development now for Steam, the staff uses the template to develop conversations that can be directly integrated into the larger game.
Keys to a Dream
An in-progress game from Matters at Play using the AnswerVerse Conversation Template to tell a story about the history of the DREAM Act.
Linguistic Gaps 101
A standalone student-created episode exploring communication barriers for foreign students. This game was built on top of the Answer Campus demo code as an experiment with reusing existing features while adding features, like the ability to switch from first to third person perspective during conversations.
Examples
In a game design class at the University of Miami, students had 2 weeks to create a conversation that took place in the world of Answer Campus.
Talk to Deepak
This conversation starts out a little tense with Deepak pressing you for not remembering them. As the conversation continues, the player can learn more about Deepak's culture.
Fight
The player runs into Ji-ah in the dining hall where she is processing a fight she recently had with her girlfriend Charli.
AI Music
The player talks to Deepak about AI and what that means for the future of music.
Beau at the Library
The player runs into Beau at the library and learns about his love of musical theater.
Games as Public Media
The AnswerVerse isn’t a grand claim about the future of games. It’s a working example: a growing, intentional effort to build playable stories that are educational, expressive, and adaptable for research. With Answer Campus, we involve students not just as learners, but as collaborators that shape stories, tools, and the play experience itself. This template is a direct product of developing a production pipeline that could serve as both a portfolio piece and a launchpad for full standalone episodes, within NERDLab or beyond it.
We have built a starting point. It’s where students grow, projects have longer lifespans, and maybe a new audience forms. An audience that seeks games that are free from the constraints of monetization. Some of those games may be messy or rough, but all of them are made in a spirit of curiosity, not commerce.