Our Final Story

Above is the structure of out story,  the structure involves some set up at the start, and as the choices flow downwards, we start introducing mini games.

There are multiple endings regarding fighting the giant creature at the end, which all link to the stat points section at the end which lets the player know their dominant traits.

The ending links to our market in a clever way in which when the player is handed a card in the story, we hand them are card during the market also.

Last prototyping and practice

We all got together again to get everything together and do some final texts before the market tomorrow. We didn't get to pre-set up our stall as the room was still quite busy even as we left, but our set up is fairly simple and we'll be arriving early to get it sorted.

I ran the cards and survey by everyone else, then printed and cut them.

We timed and tested some of the mini games.

• The memory cards need to be backed on card or similar to make them easier to flip and also ensure they don't get messed up from so many people using them.
• The exact number of points/time needed for the ball bounce.
• The method used for the final target game (we're going by ammo rather than time given.)
• Also timed out the story overall to make sure we didn't need to trim it down. (It should take roughly 5 minutes, which is a good length.)

We also did a quick run through of the story with Sam as the player to see if this was all fair. We'll probably do a couple more of these tomorrow morning with the full set up if there's time.

More decorations from Kajal:

Story Files

Story (Kezia side finished)

Story (Michael side finished)

I finished up my part, then Michael gave me his, which I spell checked, coded, and made other small changes to, then I sent it back to him so he can touch up his side some more.

Final story file

Mini Games

Here are the final mini games for our story:

Memory Game (Kezia):

[add current image]

Maze (Kajal):

Ball Bounce (Sam):

[img]

Target Shooting (Michael and Kezia):

[Illustration by Kezia; guns provided by Michael]

Player Survey

A last minute addition, but I had a thought of how we could make our stall more of a two way exchange, which is something we've struggled with from the beginning.

After the game, we give the player a survey to fill out rating their experience. This way, we get a judgement of our own character based on how we presented the game they just played.

These answers are very silly. Possibly too silly. But, like the story, we want to survey to be funnyand interesting so it doesn't feel like a chore to the participants.

Result Card WIP

Initial design for the result card we'll be handing out to players.

Keeping it simple b/w to keep printing costs down. One the day, we'll look at the results page from the player's game and fill in the numbers based on their actions. The 'Assessment' section is for whatever comment we feel like giving to the player, like "nice hat" or "bad at memory games". Just to make it more personal for everyone.

Story File WIP

An updated version of our story file, in preparation for our test run tomorrow.

New:

• Image background
• Stat counter
• End card

Still to be added:

• Final fight (Kezia and Michael side)
• More route options (Michael side)
• Possible changes to accommodate new mini games (Kezia and Michael side)

[DOWNLOAD HERE]

Game Mechanics Update

I've been working on a different organization method. We didn't want to have any choices end up being useless/unimportant, which meant keeping track of them all.

Originally I was doing this manually:

[hell.png]

This very quickly became a mess and waaaay more work than I could do (3 choices x 3 choices x 3 choices etc = thousands of boxes).

The new method is taking advantage of some coding Twine has built in, which allows you to keep track of characteristics, so the game can have a money system, keep track of if you've picked up certain items, etc, and change dialogue based on this.

This allows me to keep track of personality traits and give a more personalized end result while keeping the behind the scenes tidier and easy to work with. (It looks the same to the player, but with less of a chance of mistakes since I don't have to spell check 10000 passages.) The traits I'm using are Passive, Aggressive, Curious, Cautious, Fun, and Serious.

[new structure]

I've also been working on the style sheet to make the game more interesting to look at than black text on a white background. I'll look at adding more once I've got all of the technical side sorted.

Story WIP

Kezia's half:
Download here

Michael's half:
Download here

Together! (Still in progress)

Game progress

I'm still progressing on writing my part of the story. I have it all planned, now I just need to get it written up and linked together.

One issue I'm running into is, as shown in the above image, there's a lot to keep track of in terms of choices and their outcomes. The plan is to make sure every decision counts and is counted on the card. Doing this in Twine will mean we won't have to be keeping tallies on the day, along with everything else we're taking care of. However, it does mean a spaghetti junction of boxes to wrangle with.

The other thing I'm worried about is whether the story is going to be too long, which will hold up lines and potentially get boring for players, but this can be tested tomorrow at the proto-market.

Finalising Ideas for the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Story

The Narrative - Further Thoughts and Ideas (planning)

Concept for the Narrative: Wellington and Elements

More Story notes

[add Michael's notes]

THOUGHTS:
I think 5 choices is a bit much, especially if we want to them to make quick decisions. It would be better to have similar choices split off into more specific ones (e.g. “Approach person” = confident, which can then split into “steal phone” (confident + mean) or “offer help” (confident + nice).)

I think we can avoid the “final choice is the only one that matters” issue by just making sure not to link choices; make each path unique so we know exactly what choices they made the whole way through and give an ending based off that.

This sounds like more work but we could still copy/paste scenarios, we would just be able to keep track of the events up until that point. This would also mean we wouldn’t have to stick to just 5 traits, we could look at the overall combination of choices and deduce their character (hopefully without making this too complicated haha;;)

Another idea I had to combat the inevitable “well I’ll choose this because it’ll advance the plot” issue: sometimes instead of action choices we give emotional choices. E.g.

“Do you enter the big interesting building or not?” < everyone’s just gonna enter the obvious plot building, even if it might look dangerous.

“You see a big building, the only one around for miles. The door is open, beckoning you inside. You feel...
> Anxious about what is to come.
> Eager to see what’s inside
> Resigned to the fact entering this building is your only option”

This would let us get an image of their personality while also advancing the plot to another choice that won’t be as obvious.
Other traits:
* Self preservation (don’t risk life for others, just try to get yourself out)
* Curiosity (exploring everything)

I did some further possible plot on my own. I kinda focussed on something mystic involving water, since we already had the protag waking up in a fountain. Including magic stuff also allows for more possible pathways and more intense scenarios.

Story Notes

We had a group meeting on Tuesday to fill out the production snapshot and discuss what to do next.

Our top priority is getting down the plot and themes of the story so that we can start sorting out decoration and our stall set up. Michael and I (Kezia) are going to be the writers.

We've decided to set it in Wellington to give people a sense of familiarity, but also probably include some fantasy or adventure themes to make it interesting.

Week 6 Prototyping and Testing

Today we set up our basic structure and let people test our story.

There was a mostly positive response to the idea, but we also got a lot of feedback of how we could work it better. I ended up making a lot of little updates to the game on the day in response to people's popular choices.

Some main points:

• Larger text (we should have a larger screen on the day, so we can definitely fix this.)
• Images and sound to make it more interesting (these were already in our plans, but it's good to see others thought this too)
• Make the idea of our stall clearly explained up front (we were introducing it as people approached, but signs/etc would help)
• Since we were narrating the story, it was suggested that we remove the text from the screen completely as it is distracting to listen and read simultaneously. (Without narration, there's just awkward silent reading, so we are definitely doing narrating.)

We also got a lot of insight into the kind of choices people were making most often. Since the story set up was an adventure, people were choosing based off what would be most exciting, not necessarily what they would naturally do. People were also very trusting and kind, more likely to talk than attack when given the choice.

Week 6 test game

I've out together a little test version of our choice game in Twine for the proto-market tomorrow. Twine is a simple program for making interactive stories. It also allows for a lot of visual customization, including inset images and sound, but I haven't looked into those yet.

It only has a few endings at this point, but I was just throwing it together without much team input. The final will be much more polished with the help of the whole team.

[Download html file]

Week 5 - Visualizations