If... Else...

It's The Coding That Gets Me

I decided to start a new Twine project for the game jam. Not because I wasn't happy or excited for the others, but because I decided I needed to focus on just one mechanic and create something that revolves around that one mechanic. In this case, I wanted it to be a choice-consequence mechanic. I figure, if I'm going to be making choice-based experiences, then I should probably be familiar with the nitty gritty details of how they work. 

Which is great! Great idea! Wonderful! Woohoo! 

Except...

Well, with choice-consequence mechanics, we start to lean more into coding. Which I can do. I've made RenPy visual novels before, for funsies, and I'm proud to say that I did get pretty far with it, going way beyond simple choice mechanics. But I'm really not feeling it these days.

It's a combination of my arms still healing (my fingers hurt after typing for more than a few minutes) and not being all that interested in coding when all I want to do is write out a story instead. Besides, Twine was starting to get a little... overwhelming. Visually, all those passages and all the arrows between them was just a lot. Not to mention, I'm not a Twine expert, so I always end up having to Google how to do X or Y or Z, and it's a lot of trial and error that just really gets me stuck in the mud.

Thus, I came up with a little compromise for myself: 

I'm going to write the darn thing in a document and transfer it into Twine later. 😎

I can see absolutely no problems or issues arising from this. 

None at all.

Anyway, this is what it looks like so far:

As you can see, choices are placed in bold in the script, and the results of those choices is in ALL CAPS and green. I'm using indentation to signal when we've moved into a choice-specific part of the script, which I think is alright for now, since the choices early on in the game are not route-changing choices. When we enter "forks in the road", so to speak, I'll probably use the Header function to make it easier to link to different parts of the document and organize the script more efficiently. 

For example, maybe the first "fork" asks the player to choose between a Deceptive route and an Honest route, which will be their own separate sections with their own headers in the document, making it a lot easier to keep track of everything.

That should be enough for now. After all, the whole point of this project is just choice-consequence. I feel like this is a much easier way for my brain to keep track of everything and a little less overwhelming than working it out on Twine from the get-go. Maybe it's the writer in me, but moving things into a normal word document always seems to do the trick when I'm getting overwhelming in other programs or formats.

I'm going to try to keep significant choices like that to a minimum, not least because I want this to be a ~30-minute experience, even though I know the story I'm thinking of definitely can't be contained in such a small frame. Maybe this will be the prologue and first chapter. Maybe if players enjoy it enough, I'll continue with it, but that's not really in the plans right now. Nevertheless, I'm thinking I'll nestle about 2 major choices in with a whole range of microdecisions. 

As an aside:

I want to begin considering these kinds of games outside of the win/loss dichotomy. In other words, I'm not interested in having Good or Bad endings, or even Win or Loss endings. At least, not objectively built into the game itself. Players can experience the story and play the game and make decisions that they feel will bring them towards the goal they want their character to attain, and as such they can craft endings on their own, without judgement from the game itself. 

This gives me more flexibility when it comes to creating choices and their consequences. I want to create choices and consequences where huge, significant changes can happen, and you have to deal with them - the game doesn't just "Bad Ending" you there. Yeah, you can make a huge mistake, like getting your partner killed or losing the priceless artifact to the thief, and still have to continue on in the story and see what you can salvage of the situation. 

Obviously, that does come with a lot - a lot - of work. Defining story limitations in games is super important because it means not having to pour more hours into it than you have. But just as a little experiment, just to humour myself, I'm going to give it a go. Try to be flexible yet restrictive. I'll let you know how it goes (or doesn't). 

And to be fair, this isn't anything groundbreaking. I can think of some games that I've played in the past that have done something similar. I'm not trying to do anything big here. Just something that's a little more aligned with what I personally prefer as a player.

Let's see if I can pull it off.