No Turning Back Now

This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning. 

In order to familiarize myself with Texture, I played a few of the fictions available in the Texture Public Library. Go on, try Predictions for a Strip Mall Psychic or Awake, it shan't take long and you'll enjoy it (and things I say now about Texture's behaviour will make sense!).

The way that the text on each page of a Texture fiction shifts and expands when you interact with it is interesting. I think it lends itself to stories of contemplation, reconsideration, and realization. Using one of the few verbs you can choose from on one of the highlighted words usually adds more text or recontextualizes what's already there, possibly adding a new verb unless it ends the scene and prompts you to go to the next page.

It's very much about navigating through the text by focusing in on individual words and how you can understand and interact with them. There's some tricksy things you can try (check out the Texture experiment "Put the Fruit in the Bowl" where your selection of verbs is recast as items in your inventory), but the slow and deliberate display of word changes and red highlighting really puts the focus on the text and your understanding of it. The natural game is to try a verb and then see how you've changed the meaning of the text.

I think that this could work well for a game involving investigation. Inspecting clues, or the words that people say, or trying to understand how certain elements fit together... To incorporate this into my graveyard game I have a vague idea that the POV character reads obituaries of the recently deceased and investigates further details to see if that person fits the Pattern of whatever blood ritual they're conducting. Perhaps I'll need to play a Texture fiction with some investigation in it for another creative spark (though I feel like the answering of search terms in Awake gave a pretty good approximation).

Googling around for more ideas on Texture, I found a couple of articles by Emily Short.  This one on RPS gives a pretty good rundown of how Texture works and what it might be good at, but it was while reading her interview with Jim Munroe that I had a sudden brainwave. They talk about significant choices, and pulling the player in different directions, and early choices leading you down fairly different branches.

In my game I've been thinking that the PC is digging up corpses after researching them, collecting blood to draw some complex pattern. I think it will be important to force the player to choose whether or not to kill someone, rather than continue digging up corpses. I have an image of the POV character suddenly realizing that some other character Fits Into The Pattern, and not only that but obtaining their blood would end this ritual and free the PC from their obsession. A genuine branch in the narrative, depending on the choice made--(and perhaps a rewarding third way if the player avoids temptation or an obvious path).

The contemplative nature of Texture will encourage a suitable narrative. I like the idea of the PC thinking about and realizing recently deceased people connect to each other (and perhaps the small town setting? not sure), and then having the player come along for the ride when the PC realizes they might be capable of murder--and having the player decide only whether they go through with it or not. I suspect I'll need to approach this with some care. And if I can't get the feel right, I might need to put aside Texture for a different system that's a little gamier (like ChoiceScript perhaps). But yeah, let's see if I can get the player to want to kill someone to complete a blood ritual!

Next: some specific design details, or playing a Texture fiction involving more explicit investigation for inspiration.