Game Description
In this VR branching narrative, choices are made by using your putt-putt club to sink a ball into one of several holes found on giant skeeball-esque boards. The game plays with the concept of diegesis, i.e. what is of the story world and what isn't. It does this by mapping the flummoxy nature of first date conversations onto the uncertain but skill-based outcome (i.e. execution uncertainty) of skeeball golf. Split into a 2d narrative and 3d player-space, the two spaces often affect each-other.
Postmortem
Working on this demo proved our concept was viable. However, the idea still has so much untapped potential that deserves to be explored. This Postmortem contains three sections: Game Design, and Writing, and Future Plans.
Game Design
Lesson: Inventing terminology.
Seeing how the 3d player-space and the 2d narrative could map onto each-other in interesting ways via diegesis was a fascinating endeavor. However, my original pitch and the ensuing discussion was the most confused and convoluted conversation I've ever witnessed. The problem was that due to the gameplay's diegetic framework, we desperately needed to invent new terminology that separated board choices from narrative dialogue from Unity scenes. By agreeing upon shared formal definitions we sped up discussions and allowed for more meaningful conversations. Terminology examples: Frame, Unity Object that contained the board and its associated dialogue; Story Screen, movie-like screen where narrative of 2d sprites and dialogue appeared; Decision text, the text description of each hole.
Lesson: The design challenge of diegetic gameplay.
Figuring out how to immerse players in the story and have them easily play the game was where the bulk of our debating and playtesting went into. This is because we needed players to process a lot of information which all theoretically existed in different directions: reading the story screen, looking down to take the shot, reading the board's choices and analyzing the choice's difficulty, watching the ball's trajectory and outcome. For example, we had 4 different designs we tried out for associating decision text, from being on side panels to the board, to on a screen at your feet. By the end, I learned that achieving a desired effect such as multi-directional attention comes about equally from big choices (board placement) as from more subtle ones (A sound to get their attention upwards, wait a few seconds before moving on, have the hole the ball landed in flash).
Lesson: Decisions (, and how to make them engaging).
Our theory behind what made the game's decisions engaging fell into two types: player expression, and difficulty. Player expression represented moments where the shot isn't hard, but the decision is engaging because the player is given the opportunity to exert their own will over the game-world. Often, these moments could be used to determine a player's desires and adapt the game accordingly, like the choice to win or let her win in Scene 8 reveals whether winning the date is important to the player. Taking inspiration from Bartle's Player Types, once classified into types each player can have their desires better met (players who let her win lower the points requirement for a successful date). Other player expression choices have no stakes and are plain silly: choosing whether to take her up on a dare or not in Scene 3.
Determining all the different possible representations of difficulty in our game was a priority, as it helped us keep the experience fresh and varied. Here is the list:
• Difficulty of the shot (Skee-ball board) • Execution uncertainty, and the consequences if you mess up. (i.e. miss one hole and end up in another with a known terrible decision, i.e. Scene 1) • Uncertainty of the outcome of a hole (i.e. lying in Scene 6 and Scene 3 mystery holes). • Memory. Unexpectedly un-abstracting game's date as some weird golf-based branching narrative, and reward the player for something that you would be rewarded for doing on a real date (i.e. Scene 7).
Writing
The tone I was going for was originally pure comedy, but I wanted to challenge myself by being more expansive and instead trying to be funny without sacrificing the date as a compelling character. The game is broken down into scenes, each representing a self-contained event. Each scene consists of frames (dialogue followed by a board choice), and it is the choices made in these frames that determines the branching narrative. In the end, there's a lot I loved about the script and a lot I'd like to change with what I've learned along the way (see Future Plans).
Original Storyboard
Final Storyboard
Lesson: The quirks of writing for games.
One unexpected challenge was that a playable game build didn’t actually exist until a few weeks to our deadline, and so much of the feedback on my writing existed in a vacuum as the full experience could not be assessed. I think it is important in the future to devise ways to get creative when play-testing the story. The Twinery text adventure was my later solution to this problem, but there are plenty of other ways to get creative with it. For example, a role-playing method where I dungeon master the story and the player goes through it with some physical golf props would be have been as helpful as it sounds crazy.
Lesson: Dialogue influenced by medium.
Another thing I learned was the important distinction between writing in different mediums. While I was familiar with how comedy takes different shapes in literature, sketch comedy, and standup, exploring the specific medium quirks of video games was unique. I grew to appreciate how writing in video games is less determined by the general medium, but instead how it bends itself uniquely around how said writing is presented in-game. From this, I grew to understand what makes a game like Stanley Parable have such different dialogue and delivery than old-school rpgs.
Lesson: Writing as a piece of game design.
When player expression and choice are key to your experience, it was interesting to see how I could treat writing as a piece of game design rather than as an agent of traditional narrative. The root of my brainstorming came about from devising how many different ways, and through what means, one could create interesting decisions for the players to encounter. This ties in with the concept of difficultly and player expression discussed in the game design segment. In this game where narrative interrupts gameplay, I found that inserting meaningless choices to break up long dialogue was often better for pacing than no choice at all. In games, writing is traditionally subservient to gameplay in the same way that in movies sound is subservient to film. Playing with loosening narrative and gameplay so that they overlap more will be a big focus in improving later versions. Finally, I used diegetics as an opportunity to break from the limitations of the game's established logic: like if the player loses the dare in Scene 3, they must act out their most embarrassing memory via controller charades, or in the good ending coercing the player to saying yes or no out-loud when agreeing to a second date.
Scene 1
Scene 5
Scene 2
Scene 4
Scene 7
Scene 8
Scene 3
Ending Scene
Scene 6
Tutorial
Future Plans:
I believe this demo was most successful in inducing interesting choices. In later versions I focus on expanding upon the diegetic interactions. We had so many directions we wanted to take the concept that we had to cut due to scope. For one, I would like to see more unique boards that featured themes or storytelling elements in them that made them more unique and engaging to interact with. A basic example: if your date mentions that you are on a bridge then the skeeball board might have a little bridge worked into it.
I would also like to see more story elements influence the 3d space that aren't just board changes. A cut idea was having a cardboard cut-out ex walk across a board that if you hit would anger your date, or a giant alligator you had to defeat by landing a ball in their mouth. If successful, the diegetic framework would make these interactions feel natural and instantly understood.
Smaller little links between the two spaces could help bring the story to life, like having a big splash of blue particles when the date falls into the water in scene 8. In a later version, I think not only connecting the two, but giving each space their own life would be awesome. As example, another unimplemented idea was having it so if you missed the ramp, there was a small chance your ball would sprout legs and jump off the edge of the platform.
Finally, from a writing standpoint I'd like to tweak the date's character so that she doesn't come across as that ever-pernicious Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. This was not my original intention for her character, but it came about by having her aggressively mirror the player's own absurdity. This would prove good from both a quality as well as moral standpoint, as play-testers tended to find the parts in which they did crazy stuff to her horror far more entertaining than when the date would do something outrageous. With added time and scope, I already have plans to flesh out out-of-scope or previously unexplored scenes, add unique branching scenes, and rework or discard certain scenes for an overall tighter script. Also, there's no reason not to also add a male date option!
