The literature reflects a shortage of empirical research on educational game design. This paper presents the results from a randomized controlled study on the impact of narrative and digital badging on learning and engagement in an educational game that teaches basic brain structure and function to undergraduate psychology students. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions, and correspondingly played a base version of the game, the base version plus fantasy-based narrative, the base version plus digital badges or the base version and both fantasy-based narrative and digital badges. Eighty students completed a subject matter pretest, played the game in its entirety and then completed a posttest. Quantitative analyses revealed that the manipulations did not significantly impact learning or engagement. While the manipulations were ineffective in this study, future research should examine how professional writing affects narrative impact and how difficulty level can be better assessed in digital badging in order to see if the results remain consistent.