This project was based on a combination of the
Space Quest games from the 1980s and '90s, and the "Letter to the Aliens" page from
Steal Like an Artist.
Space Quest is a short-burst, text-based animated adventure game that is known for it's random, misleading deaths when you make a single wrong move. I attempted to emulate this in a "choose your own adventure" type format by incorporating brief passages of text before every life or death choice. I attempted to make each "game over" death humorous, as in the example photo at the right from
Space Quest 5. In addition to these deaths, I included four different possible endings to achieve, plus two "joke endings", depending on the choices you make (or if you survive, of course). This enhances replayability in an otherwise short experience, keeping the player thinking and engaged throughout.
In
Harmony! (or Death), you are tasked with heading the greeting party for a recently discovered alien race, known as the
Estrons. Your choices will lead to peace with both of your races, or a war for domination. The story is full of B.S. deaths (13 at my last count, which was totally unintentional), humor, and a surprise ending. My biggest challenge was honestly just following all the strings to make sure I had a decent body and an ending for every pathway. I knew the story I wanted to tell, but each pathway started to blend together with the others after working on the bigger picture for so long. It would've been much harder to track if Inklewriter didn't highlight loose ends in red! I had a blast working with this story and interactive fiction in general, and feel like this project allowed me to create a "game" even though I have no background in game design.
This project was based on a combination of the Space Quest games from the 1980s and '90s, and the "Letter to the Aliens" page from Steal Like an Artist. Space Quest is a short-burst, text-based animated adventure game that is known for it's random, misleading deaths when you make a single wrong move. I attempted to emulate this in a "choose your own adventure" type format by incorporating brief passages of text before every life or death choice. I attempted to make each "game over" death humorous, as in the example photo at the right from Space Quest 5. In addition to these deaths, I included four different possible endings to achieve, plus two "joke endings", depending on the choices you make (or if you survive, of course). This enhances replayability in an otherwise short experience, keeping the player thinking and engaged throughout.
In Harmony! (or Death), you are tasked with heading the greeting party for a recently discovered alien race, known as the Estrons. Your choices will lead to peace with both of your races, or a war for domination. The story is full of B.S. deaths (13 at my last count, which was totally unintentional), humor, and a surprise ending. My biggest challenge was honestly just following all the strings to make sure I had a decent body and an ending for every pathway. I knew the story I wanted to tell, but each pathway started to blend together with the others after working on the bigger picture for so long. It would've been much harder to track if Inklewriter didn't highlight loose ends in red! I had a blast working with this story and interactive fiction in general, and feel like this project allowed me to create a "game" even though I have no background in game design.
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