Vengeance of the few
Type: Individual
Length: 1 month, Ended April 2024
Publisher: DigiPen Institute of Technology
overview
After a few months of taking my Narrative Design II course at DigiPen Institute of Technology, I ended the semester with a month-long game pitch project. There were two major portions of this project: Pre-production documentation with 5 main elements and a branching-choice Twine teaser.
Pre-Production
I first conceived how the plot would develop by using the Five-Act Story Structure. I got an overview of what would happen, including all twists and conflicts, while leaving stretch room for gameplay. I got the most feedback on this sheet to make sure the plot was fully explored and there was nothing important left unexplained.
To get a better feel for the characters in the story, I made sure to understand their personalities, goals, and motivations. For each main character or key NPC, I created character sheets.
Since I theoretically would have to write for these characters, their voices would all have to be distinct and noteworthy. To illustrate each important character’s voice, I made dialogue sheets. I got feedback and iterated on these sheets to make them better.
With the main characters brought to life, I wanted to bring the world to life through generic enemy and friendly NPCs. This story is set in Puerto Rico, meaning it would have a vibrant culture to draw from, mixing a specific Spanish dialect as well as English. I wanted this mix and the personal struggles every individual would face to come through, enriching the gameplay.
To help focus the story and expand on the gameplay mechanics, I made an Items and Locations List. It encompasses short descriptions of 10 items and locations in the game that have importance and relevance to the protagonist or gameplay.
Twine
After getting a good understanding of the world and characters, I made a branching choice, Text-based teaser game to illustrate the character relationships and development, conflict, severity, gameplay, and environment
Though I only had 9 days to make it, start to finish, I playtested the teaser and made 3 big changes.
First Change
After the 1st playtest, I changed the narration from third-person omniscient to first-person. This helps the player understand who they are playing as at all times.
Second Change
I also made sure that I offered the player a choice at every point I could, even if they led to the same passage. This encouraged the player to read each passage carefully and allowed them to choose how to characterize the player without overscoping the project.
Third Change
The last changes I made had to do with context and clarity. Since the teaser starts in the middle of the story, I made sure that the player was able to decipher relationships solely based on dialogue and reactions.
Play the full story here.
Reflection
Working on this Twine project and preparing with all the documentation helped me focus my energy and organize it into steps. The idea started out as jumbled, but I feel like I understood the characters by the end, which helped tremendously when writing the dialogue and describing actions and reactions in the Twine. I also learned about playtesting a branching choice project to help get the most out of it within the short, busy timeframe I had. This experience gave me practice writing non-invasive exposition in someone else’s voice.