Text-Based Game (update #2)
(November 19th, 2021)
I’ve recently reached a large milestone for my text-based game and would like to provide a bit of information about how the
development has been going. I recently finished all of the scenes that I had planned out in my outline and feel as if I am in a
spot where it is a viable game. My next steps are to move on to testing and continue editing. I’ve been working on a
questionnaire for testers, but I haven’t begun testing lately. I did a little testing early on in the process.
Development:
Twine is an interesting program. It mostly works like a flowchart, connecting different passages together. I’ve included some
screen shots here to help show you how it works.
There is a fair bit of basic programming involved in my particular game. It is really mostly just setting up variables, changing
them, and then using if-statements which check their value. I have variables set-up to track the karma, companion approval, and
the bishop’s approval throughout your play-through. This is able to be seen when the player checks their status, but also has an
effect on the epilogue, completely changing the dialogue there. I use some programming to track some of the links, like with the
‘Check Status’ and ‘Ask Party For Advice’. These all actually link to the same passage and the code changes what is seen. I also
have a variable to track which companion you choose and use if-checks to determine which bits of dialogue or options for the next
passage are available. Many if-statements are used to determine whether or not to display certain text or options.
The program, Twine, builds an HTML file that plays the game, so there is also access to general HTML tags and CSS styling, as
well as even JavaScript. I mostly have used this to remove the back-button that is there by default, as that can be exploited
throughout the game, and to change some of the colors. You can also use these features to add images and sound.
Design:
In some sense, adventure games/text-based games generally have two different avenues of design. There are ones where certain
options cause your character to lose the game and you have to move back to a checkpoint/the beginning of the game and try again.
The other type is present in games where there is effectively no wrong answer that causes you to lose the game and no matter what
path you choose, you end up in the same spot, beating the game. My game is in the second category; no matter what you pick, you
end up successfully completing your mission. The truth is, the first category of games are also quite similar to the second, as
restarting the game every time you mess up will inevitably allow you to reach the correct solution as well. What I did implement
to actually make it feel as if your decisions ultimately matter is the tracking of morality/approval and its impact on the
epilogue.
Another point I’ve noticed through developing is that, you have to measure how long a particular passage is. I don’t think
anyone wants to read over a page at a time during a text-based game. However, some of what makes these games appealing, is the
detailed, evocative descriptions. It’s also relevant to make sure that no matter what path the player takes, they’re not having a
drastically different play-time or seeing drastically different length passages. I really won’t have a major sense of how my
general game-length is until I test more. And even then, I don’t think many players read very much nowadays, not that their input
wouldn’t still be valuable. I’d really like to find some testers that are active readers or enjoy playing text-based games like
visual novels. So it is a tough balance.
Frankly, I didn’t imagine I would be getting into writing this much when I started this project. I had always been interested in
it though. I enjoy reading quite a bit, I’ve liked my writing assignments in school, and I write a lot of notes/ideas/brief
blurbs in my notebooks. This is likely the largest creative writing project I’ve made. Also, just by virtue of it being a
branching story rather than a straight-forward novel, there is a lot of writing that needs to be done that players will not see
on a single play through. The player likely sees less than half the passages I wrote in a given play-through. All together, this
game is 29,865 words. From what I’ve read, the average novel is about 40,000+ words. So, it has been a significant amount of
writing. I had the outline done a long time ago and it really took a long time to fill out the details between each major plot
point.
I would also say that, although Twine is great, I don’t think it is the perfect program for making complex games and doesn’t
easily allow for dramatic changes to the game’s structure. You can do a lot with HTML/CSS/JS and with the Twine language, but it
gets complex. It’s not particularly easy to add new features like key-based input or porting to different devices. I’d still like
to use Twine for the time being, especially while I just iron out all the text itself, but if I wanted to move this project on, I
would likely end up porting it to the Godot game engine. This would make it easier to add new features, like animations and such,
but would also be a significant change in that I would be able to use the tools I learn making this game in Godot on other games
that aren’t even necessarily text-based.
Anyway, this has been an informative and fun process so far and I appreciate you reading about it.