#du-buk

Some old art I never posted

Not My Type | Alright | Cute | Adorable | Pretty | Gorgeous | LORD MERCY

Midsommar is one of my favorites! When you get the chance to finish it, I would def recommend the director’s other horror film Hereditary

ugh i accidentally closed the window on my first response to this sdkfjsfs 

((This is an older ask, so the thing that Du-buk talked about is over and no one has to worry about it.  And thank you, that was sweet. c:  Sorry for the late response!!! ))

What I think personally?  I think no matter what you do, there will be someone who doesn’t get it.  Like, you could leave a big neon sign to what it is without outright stating it, and someone out there will still miss it or misinterpret it.  It’s unavoidable imo.  That being said, I don’t like to underestimate the audience either!  I like to guess that my audience is as smart as I am, and try to see the thing I’m developing from the player’s perspective if possible.  I try to remove the clues I left behind from the game and place them together in my mind.  If they’re too ambiguous, I’ll add another.  If it’s too easy to figure out, I’ll either make one or two more obtuse or remove one.  That’s not an easy thing to gauge, so I’d grab me an alpha tester or five and see how they get it.  It’s a ok if one of them doesn’t get it of course (since you’re being vague), but if you feel like none of them came close then yeah.

I’d also decide what parts of the story I want to be vague and what I want to be concrete.  Do I want to make sure that the audience knows which events go in order, and number/date journal entries or events somehow?  Or do I want them to try and guess it for themselves?  If something bad happened in a character’s backstory, is it better for the player to imagine it or for me to tell them what it was?  Leaving wiggle room for interpretation is always fun, but there are always things you want to be concrete on.  That’s up to you to decide!

I think the best way to keep your players engaged in the story is to give them a goal & a mystery to solve and go from there.  Like, Amnesia told players “hey it’s your past self I gave you amnesia” (which gets players invested in what’s going on) and “do me a solid and kill this guy for me, thanks” (an in-game goal for players to know what they’re doing).  Otherwise, you keep your players entertained the same way you would in other games: interesting characters, neat places to explore, fun game mechanics, puzzles that aren’t too simple but aren’t too hard, etc.. If you’re a story based game you might not have all of those of course, but yeah!  Get an alpha tester or two and have ‘em tell you what they think of things.