This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.
It's halfway through November now, and I should probably actually stop researching, planning, ideating, etc., and just got on with it. Getting to the point of making something is always a hard transition for me. Luckily, I'm far from the only person to have to deal with this. Em Short has an excellent post on how to get from idea to implementation. The method that looks the most doable is to actually, in your chosen medium, implement the most basic but complete and working version of your game.
This reminds me of advice in other fields to make a working prototype as quick as possible and then iterate it. Applies in any time of game, any kind of art or design project, any kind of experiment--no theoretical plan survives contact with the real world, so get it into the real world as quick as possible. I hope I get better at doing it quicker with time.
Anyway, this begs the question: what is the minimum viable version of my game? I think an almost totally linear version of the story will do for this. Here's the answer I'll implement (it doesn't have to be right or good or accurate because the whole point is to add to it and change as I go!):
ONE:
newspaper. town name, family names, suggestion of bad things, suggestion of investigation.
always goes to TWO
TWO:
newspaper. corpses are being dug up. flesh out bad things. information on ritual. reveal that protagonist is NOT investigator, but perpetrator.
goes to THREE
THREE:
graveyard. look at specific graves, epitaphs. dig up some for ritual.
goes to FOUR
FOUR:
graveyard. confronted by real investigator.
CHOICE: kill investigator--go to END1
kill self--go to END2
give up--go to END3
all ENDs are a final newspaper page.
END1: ritual completed. bad things avoided--but at what cost?
END2: ritual completed? (interesting idea for full game--depends on how many/which corpses dug up, state of relationship with investigator?) ambiguous/unclear.
END3: ritual incomplete. bad things happen, but conscience clear?
Righto, let's get cracking!
Monday, November 14, 2016
Friday, November 11, 2016
Content Warning
This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.
I have been feeling dark since the election results, and the subsequent consequences.
Perhaps that's why I've had some heavy thoughts about the climactic choice in the graveyard game, and the context in which the choice is made.
The protagonist feels trapped. They are doing something awful, something they don't want to do, only because they believe they are the only one who can do it and if they don't: not only will it not get done, but there will be terrible consequences. Not only that, they have realized that their strategy of digging up corpses will ultimately fail, and the only way to move forward is to kill a living person for their blood.
In this context, the PC is confronted by the Investigator, who wants to stop the PC. The PC has an impossible choice. They could complete the ritual by killing the investigator, who was been dogging their every step and caused the corpse strategy to fail. Or they could complete the ritual by killing themselves, a surprise realization in the moment that suicide would end both the ritual and all the horror and guilt they have to experience. Or finally, they could decide to give up, that the ritual is too much to deal with and that it is better to turn themselves in and allow the consequences.
I hope that I will be able to write well enough to give that moment the appropriate weight and care. I also think it would be unethical to blindside players with this, so I need to build up to it and perhaps also include a content warning on the front page. Possibly I will ultimately decide that I can't do this justice and will try a different choice.
I have been feeling dark since the election results, and the subsequent consequences.
Perhaps that's why I've had some heavy thoughts about the climactic choice in the graveyard game, and the context in which the choice is made.
The protagonist feels trapped. They are doing something awful, something they don't want to do, only because they believe they are the only one who can do it and if they don't: not only will it not get done, but there will be terrible consequences. Not only that, they have realized that their strategy of digging up corpses will ultimately fail, and the only way to move forward is to kill a living person for their blood.
In this context, the PC is confronted by the Investigator, who wants to stop the PC. The PC has an impossible choice. They could complete the ritual by killing the investigator, who was been dogging their every step and caused the corpse strategy to fail. Or they could complete the ritual by killing themselves, a surprise realization in the moment that suicide would end both the ritual and all the horror and guilt they have to experience. Or finally, they could decide to give up, that the ritual is too much to deal with and that it is better to turn themselves in and allow the consequences.
I hope that I will be able to write well enough to give that moment the appropriate weight and care. I also think it would be unethical to blindside players with this, so I need to build up to it and perhaps also include a content warning on the front page. Possibly I will ultimately decide that I can't do this justice and will try a different choice.
Monday, November 7, 2016
Grave Consequences
This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.
I tried out the tutorial for Texture and found it pretty simple and intuitive to use. I don't think there will be much trouble making it work for the core interaction of the graveyard game, reading a newspaper and learning things (which will be stored as flags). However, this design has consequences: as the game progresses, later choices all need to respond sensibly to every possibly combination of choices made up til that point. I've successfully mocked up a test of newspaper reading in Texture, but I'll definitely need to try out a multiple-choices structure that stores the results of previous choices as flags.
In an attempt to see the story in a way that would help map it onto such a structure, I've given a first stab at a design. It's hung on a simple three-act narrative and has some more specifics about what screens there should be and what sorts of things the player can do on them.
Primary gameplay: Each day, read the newspaper, and then decide how to proceed with respect to the blood ritual.
Plot structure:
Act 1: Introduction of town, major elements of its history and old family lines, the POV character, and the graveyard.
hits: weird troubles in the town. corpses being dug up from graves. investigation begins.
transition: it becomes clear that the POV character is the perpetrator, -not- the investigator.
Act 2: Exploring the need for the blood ritual. Dark past of the town, actions of the families. Something bad will happen if the ritual isn't completed--or at least, that's what the PC believes. AMBIGUOUS. PC is -reluctant-, feels forced into ritual.
hits: patterns of blood drawn in graveyard. link corpses to town events and history. investigator antagonist gets closer.
climax: choice! to kill investigator to complete ritual now, or continue with corpses to avoid murder but possibly fail at saving town.
Act 3: the ritual either succeeds or fails. either way, there are consequences: for the town, for the PC, for the investigator. it's never quite clear if it really worked--but there are clearly different endings for the results of major choices.
hits: differently depending on choices, but... PC faces peril and -survives-. investigator resolves relationship with PC. town lives on, changed.
likely necessary screens:
newspaper;
pages include headlines, weather, funnies, horoscopes, and obits.
verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, ...
graveyard;
pages include individual tombstone texts, cemetary overview, possibly a shack, ...
verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, dig, bleed, paint, ...
library???;
pages include the catalogue, individual books, ...
verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, ...
Next: more writing! I need to develop the setting and characters.
I tried out the tutorial for Texture and found it pretty simple and intuitive to use. I don't think there will be much trouble making it work for the core interaction of the graveyard game, reading a newspaper and learning things (which will be stored as flags). However, this design has consequences: as the game progresses, later choices all need to respond sensibly to every possibly combination of choices made up til that point. I've successfully mocked up a test of newspaper reading in Texture, but I'll definitely need to try out a multiple-choices structure that stores the results of previous choices as flags.
In an attempt to see the story in a way that would help map it onto such a structure, I've given a first stab at a design. It's hung on a simple three-act narrative and has some more specifics about what screens there should be and what sorts of things the player can do on them.
Primary gameplay: Each day, read the newspaper, and then decide how to proceed with respect to the blood ritual.
Plot structure:
Act 1: Introduction of town, major elements of its history and old family lines, the POV character, and the graveyard.
hits: weird troubles in the town. corpses being dug up from graves. investigation begins.
transition: it becomes clear that the POV character is the perpetrator, -not- the investigator.
Act 2: Exploring the need for the blood ritual. Dark past of the town, actions of the families. Something bad will happen if the ritual isn't completed--or at least, that's what the PC believes. AMBIGUOUS. PC is -reluctant-, feels forced into ritual.
hits: patterns of blood drawn in graveyard. link corpses to town events and history. investigator antagonist gets closer.
climax: choice! to kill investigator to complete ritual now, or continue with corpses to avoid murder but possibly fail at saving town.
Act 3: the ritual either succeeds or fails. either way, there are consequences: for the town, for the PC, for the investigator. it's never quite clear if it really worked--but there are clearly different endings for the results of major choices.
hits: differently depending on choices, but... PC faces peril and -survives-. investigator resolves relationship with PC. town lives on, changed.
likely necessary screens:
newspaper;
pages include headlines, weather, funnies, horoscopes, and obits.
verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, ...
graveyard;
pages include individual tombstone texts, cemetary overview, possibly a shack, ...
verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, dig, bleed, paint, ...
library???;
pages include the catalogue, individual books, ...
verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, ...
Next: more writing! I need to develop the setting and characters.
Saturday, November 5, 2016
Sympathy for the Devil
This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.
I've played a few more pieces of Texture to see how people have been using it. There's not a lot out there yet, especially with regard to the investigation mechanics I'm thinking about using. I guess I'll have to be the one to make them?
That's not to say I haven't stumbled upon a few interesting tidbits. Em Short's Endure involves translating and contextualising a piece of greek text from The Odyssey, and I think a similar mechanic would work for my (provisionally titled) graveyard game.
As a first step towards the design, I'm imagining that the "main screen" of the game will be interacting with a newspaper. You'd be able to [read], for example, the {front page}, {funnies}, and {obituaries}. You'd be able to [think about] certain highlighted people's names, locations, etc. The resulting text would reflect the POV character's perspective on the topics. You could also [note] certain topics, perhaps adding new verbs to your list.
There are several pieces in the Texture library one could essentially consider spam. Like there's one that is just an ad for someone who'll write essays for you. Another that's a little more interesting is a simulation of encountering a consultant at a trade show. I'm not sure it was intentional, but at one point the consultant asks for your contact details and you have the options to [give card], [give fake number], or [leave]--and if you hold [leave], no words are highlighted so you can't actually do it. Aside from being really funny in the context of playing an advertisement presumably written by the consultant you meet in the simulation, the idea of having an action that you can't do is a useful tool (which of course has been used to great effect in other interactive fictions like Rameses and Depression Quest. We'll see if there's an opportunity to use it in the graveyard game.
I've been thinking about the POV character, and the difficulty of encouraging the player to identify with the person they will inhabit despite the whole digging up corpses for a blood ritual thing. I don't want the PC to be like Dexter or Walter White where you root for them almost just because they're the protagonist, in spite of all the horrible things they do. I want the player to understand or at least empathise with the PC when they feel they have no choice and need to do this horrible thing. This can happen when the blood ritual is being done to stop something even -worse- from happening, something that the PC genuinely believes will absolutely happen if the ritual isn't completed. I want to stay away from the Mythos as well, as a) it's been done and b) I'm not that into it. I'm put in mind of Mr Tuttle in Punchdrunk's immersive theatre production The Drowned Man. My interpretation of his story and his one-to-one scene is that he is aware that some horrible things are happening in town and he wants to stop them, but in order to do so he's gotten into some weird bad blood magic and has cracked under the pressure.
I don't think I'm a good enough writer to adequately give these experiences to players of the graveyard game, but uuuuh aim high I guess!
Next: either more theoretical procrastination by formalizing some of this design, or actually trying a prototype in Texture!
I've played a few more pieces of Texture to see how people have been using it. There's not a lot out there yet, especially with regard to the investigation mechanics I'm thinking about using. I guess I'll have to be the one to make them?
That's not to say I haven't stumbled upon a few interesting tidbits. Em Short's Endure involves translating and contextualising a piece of greek text from The Odyssey, and I think a similar mechanic would work for my (provisionally titled) graveyard game.
As a first step towards the design, I'm imagining that the "main screen" of the game will be interacting with a newspaper. You'd be able to [read], for example, the {front page}, {funnies}, and {obituaries}. You'd be able to [think about] certain highlighted people's names, locations, etc. The resulting text would reflect the POV character's perspective on the topics. You could also [note] certain topics, perhaps adding new verbs to your list.
There are several pieces in the Texture library one could essentially consider spam. Like there's one that is just an ad for someone who'll write essays for you. Another that's a little more interesting is a simulation of encountering a consultant at a trade show. I'm not sure it was intentional, but at one point the consultant asks for your contact details and you have the options to [give card], [give fake number], or [leave]--and if you hold [leave], no words are highlighted so you can't actually do it. Aside from being really funny in the context of playing an advertisement presumably written by the consultant you meet in the simulation, the idea of having an action that you can't do is a useful tool (which of course has been used to great effect in other interactive fictions like Rameses and Depression Quest. We'll see if there's an opportunity to use it in the graveyard game.
I've been thinking about the POV character, and the difficulty of encouraging the player to identify with the person they will inhabit despite the whole digging up corpses for a blood ritual thing. I don't want the PC to be like Dexter or Walter White where you root for them almost just because they're the protagonist, in spite of all the horrible things they do. I want the player to understand or at least empathise with the PC when they feel they have no choice and need to do this horrible thing. This can happen when the blood ritual is being done to stop something even -worse- from happening, something that the PC genuinely believes will absolutely happen if the ritual isn't completed. I want to stay away from the Mythos as well, as a) it's been done and b) I'm not that into it. I'm put in mind of Mr Tuttle in Punchdrunk's immersive theatre production The Drowned Man. My interpretation of his story and his one-to-one scene is that he is aware that some horrible things are happening in town and he wants to stop them, but in order to do so he's gotten into some weird bad blood magic and has cracked under the pressure.
I don't think I'm a good enough writer to adequately give these experiences to players of the graveyard game, but uuuuh aim high I guess!
Next: either more theoretical procrastination by formalizing some of this design, or actually trying a prototype in Texture!
Friday, November 4, 2016
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
All Souls Day
This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.
Before I dive right into writing a game in Texture, I want to get a sense of the setting, characters, and plot I could work with. A lot of my creative energy recently has gone into preparing material for the Xenoarchaeology game I want to run, and I don't want to use that for this game project.
My favourite tools to inspire some creative thinking are random generators, and one I like in particular when thinking about setting is Instant Game by Mike and Kyle Jones. The pdf was available for free from the Animalball games website, but that has gone offline and now it's available from archive.org. It's a rules-lite game system that comes with an incredibly useful set of d100 tables with titles like "Tones" and "Things" and "Other Things".
To generate an instant setting, you roll on the tables {Setting, Tone, Thing, Thing}, which I will do below and see what ideas the results spark.
Setting: 19--Contemporary
Tone: 77--Realistic
Thing: 11--Blood
Thing: 55--Mysterious Energy
Well, I'll admit that initially I'm a little disappointed... but there's definitely some interesting stuff here. The first three elements immediately put me in mind of police procedurals, and serial killers, of crime or horror, involving some kind of investigation. Maybe I could twist that: perhaps this takes place in a blood bank, or a hospital, or a slaughterhouse. Maybe it's somewhere that involves blood in a less direct way: out hunting in the woods, or in miniature, inside a body.
The final element of mysterious energy adds a nice feel. Perhaps the police are investigating cultists who might be conjuring something up. Perhaps the blood is part of or being affected by some energetic phenomenon (like mutations, or superhero origins). Maybe the blood is the source of magic, in some ritualistic way, or maybe in a sort of druidic/natural/life-force way.
This is a rich vein (ha!) to draw from, but maybe another roll on the tables will help narrow it down. I'll roll on the Descriptor table to modify one of the Things, and on the Places table to narrow down the setting.
Descriptor: 31--Extravagant
Place: 36--Graveyard
Crime and horror it is, then. Lets say that "extravagant" goes with "blood". Some kind of intricate pattern of blood is necessary for a ritual, and it all culminates in the graveyard? What if it -begins- in the graveyard? What if the player is not investigating a cultist/murderer, but actually IS one? Maybe a reluctant one who doesn't want to kill anyone, so instead digs up graves to acquire the necessary blood.
Alright! We have a game. The player chooses bodies to dig up in a graveyard in order to collect blood which must be arranged in a certain way to accomplish a ritual involving mysterious energy. Darker than I thought I'd go, but I suppose today IS All Souls Day...
Next steps: play some games in Texture to familiarize myself with it, and flesh out this graveyard game by adding some plot details and obstacles.
Before I dive right into writing a game in Texture, I want to get a sense of the setting, characters, and plot I could work with. A lot of my creative energy recently has gone into preparing material for the Xenoarchaeology game I want to run, and I don't want to use that for this game project.
My favourite tools to inspire some creative thinking are random generators, and one I like in particular when thinking about setting is Instant Game by Mike and Kyle Jones. The pdf was available for free from the Animalball games website, but that has gone offline and now it's available from archive.org. It's a rules-lite game system that comes with an incredibly useful set of d100 tables with titles like "Tones" and "Things" and "Other Things".
To generate an instant setting, you roll on the tables {Setting, Tone, Thing, Thing}, which I will do below and see what ideas the results spark.
Setting: 19--Contemporary
Tone: 77--Realistic
Thing: 11--Blood
Thing: 55--Mysterious Energy
Well, I'll admit that initially I'm a little disappointed... but there's definitely some interesting stuff here. The first three elements immediately put me in mind of police procedurals, and serial killers, of crime or horror, involving some kind of investigation. Maybe I could twist that: perhaps this takes place in a blood bank, or a hospital, or a slaughterhouse. Maybe it's somewhere that involves blood in a less direct way: out hunting in the woods, or in miniature, inside a body.
The final element of mysterious energy adds a nice feel. Perhaps the police are investigating cultists who might be conjuring something up. Perhaps the blood is part of or being affected by some energetic phenomenon (like mutations, or superhero origins). Maybe the blood is the source of magic, in some ritualistic way, or maybe in a sort of druidic/natural/life-force way.
This is a rich vein (ha!) to draw from, but maybe another roll on the tables will help narrow it down. I'll roll on the Descriptor table to modify one of the Things, and on the Places table to narrow down the setting.
Descriptor: 31--Extravagant
Place: 36--Graveyard
Crime and horror it is, then. Lets say that "extravagant" goes with "blood". Some kind of intricate pattern of blood is necessary for a ritual, and it all culminates in the graveyard? What if it -begins- in the graveyard? What if the player is not investigating a cultist/murderer, but actually IS one? Maybe a reluctant one who doesn't want to kill anyone, so instead digs up graves to acquire the necessary blood.
Alright! We have a game. The player chooses bodies to dig up in a graveyard in order to collect blood which must be arranged in a certain way to accomplish a ritual involving mysterious energy. Darker than I thought I'd go, but I suppose today IS All Souls Day...
Next steps: play some games in Texture to familiarize myself with it, and flesh out this graveyard game by adding some plot details and obstacles.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Get Devil Snake
Today marks the start of NaGaDeMon 2016: National Game Design Month. It's a challenge to create a game of any kind during November. I've mucked about with creating game mechanics and homebrew settings for my tabletop roleplaying, and created a small boardgame for the Coursera MOOC Introduction to Game Design (which I 100% recommend to you!), but never fully completed a game despite a few aborted attempts for GameChef and 200WordRPG.
I am going to try something this year. It might not go anywhere. I am publicly giving myself permission (and you a warning?) that I can decide not to complete a game and it won't count as a failure.
This year I think I'll create a piece of interactive fiction. I've loved int-fic for years, and enjoy playing the winners and nominees for stuff like the XYZZY awards every few years. The question now is what language to pick. I've messed around with Inform 7 before and have a half-sort-of game built off of the tutorial from Brass Lantern, but I think I should put that aside and start fresh. I also don't feel like I really understand Twine or fit into that scene. And I don't want to dive into older, weirder, more programmerly languages (like Hugo or TADS or whatever else lurks below).
One that recently came out might fit the bill: Texture. It seems to be designed specifically to be total-beginner-friendly, with a pretty drag-and-drop interface that reminds me of programming Lego Mindstorms and which Killscreen has a positive opinion of, so: why not?
NAGA DEMON! I SHALL CREATE FOR YOU A GAME USING TEXTURE.
Next: random seeds for inspiration.
I am going to try something this year. It might not go anywhere. I am publicly giving myself permission (and you a warning?) that I can decide not to complete a game and it won't count as a failure.
This year I think I'll create a piece of interactive fiction. I've loved int-fic for years, and enjoy playing the winners and nominees for stuff like the XYZZY awards every few years. The question now is what language to pick. I've messed around with Inform 7 before and have a half-sort-of game built off of the tutorial from Brass Lantern, but I think I should put that aside and start fresh. I also don't feel like I really understand Twine or fit into that scene. And I don't want to dive into older, weirder, more programmerly languages (like Hugo or TADS or whatever else lurks below).
One that recently came out might fit the bill: Texture. It seems to be designed specifically to be total-beginner-friendly, with a pretty drag-and-drop interface that reminds me of programming Lego Mindstorms and which Killscreen has a positive opinion of, so: why not?
NAGA DEMON! I SHALL CREATE FOR YOU A GAME USING TEXTURE.
Next: random seeds for inspiration.
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