The biggest challenge with my story concept is ensuring that my player is engaged enough to continue to (1) play the full story, and (2) get the most out of it. I plan to do that through the narrative so they feel to some extent invested in the actual storyline and secondly through the interactive elements.
I’m relying on these tools to encourage my reader to stay engaged in the story because I don’t have many traditional notions of player agency. Part of this is because I wanted my story to mirror real life experiences when you’re overcome with emotion that you’re not able to make decisions strategically.
In order to get some ideas of what seems possible for me to implement through Twine, I went to itch.io to play some interactive storytelling games. I narrowed my search by looking for text-based games and looked for ones with minimal visuals to see how they navigated storytelling and gameplay without relying on visual elements (similar to my project).
Game #1: Please Answer Carefully
Although this game is not the same genre, the story is told through a “survey” form where the player must ‘answer carefully’. I think that this game did a good job of setting up the players expectations of working with this format but also creates a sense of anticipation for the “horror” factor while doing something so mundane.
I want to incorporate the same kind of responsiveness after each question I ask of the player. I think this is a really simple but effective way to keep the player engaged and just incentivized enough to keep answering. I.e. they’re text box bounces.
Many of these erroneous questions serve some purpose of the propelling the narrative forward too. I.e., adding extra options that appear and disappear.
I want to try adding sound effects for certain parts of my own game. They’ve included a looping audio track of knocking. I think that for certain parts of my own story, adding something like increasing heartrate to depict some of the physiological changes that occur when your mood changes would be cool!
I also think the forced-input text box was a fun interactive part that manipulates player agency. You’re not actually able to type anything but what they’ve input but it works with the story.
Game #2: woebegone
The included an linked arrow that requires clicking for the story to move forward.
I like their style of visuals. I might consider adding in one of these to add something visually interesting without requiring art.
I think that their level of interactivity, i.e., the browser bubble that prompts the player for their name, gender, area of study, etc. helps with immersion in their story since the player is now being pulled into the story.
My favourite part is how they show the responses the player inputs throughout the game at the end. I would want to incorporate something like that into my own project. I plan on asking the player how they’re feeling, but maybe I could ask them “why?”, which would require more reflection on their part. That could make the takeaway more meaningful.
For this game especially, it was a very smart move to include links to real resources at the end of the game. I need a credits page for the developers of the Mood Meter but I would also like to provide links to the player to direct them to their research and maybe other useful resources about the message of my story.
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