Exploring Vulnerability and Affairs of the Heart, among other things
Re-emerging from the shadows with a small unexpected update! I've been journaling lately, and haven't wanted to work on my IF, but today, after a nice breakfast outing and a little more joie de vivre, I returned to the comfort of my home and began writing new scenes: a little bisou moment with Kane. Now, will this remain in the story? I'm not sure. I still hold that writing romance is the bane of my writerly existence. Nevertheless, I enjoyed writing it, mostly because in doing so I got to explore another layer to the interaction choices.
Consider the following hastily-scribbled example:
Kane’s arms pull you in, his gaze flickering from your eyes to your lips and back again. He’s asking for permission.
Kiss him; you love him, and you’re ready for this moment.
Kiss him; you’re uncertain, but you want to keep him.
Kiss him; you know it's wrong, but you want to keep him.
Turn away; you’re not ready for this yet.
Turn away; you don’t think you love him.
Turn away; you're in love with someone else.
What kind of person are you when it comes to affairs of the heart?
Are you someone who is sure of what they want, and thus takes the leap? Are you someone who is careful with your heart, reticent, but hopeful? Maybe you're allowing yourself to be taken in by the passion, knowing full well that you shouldn't. Perhaps you are someone who is abstinent, waiting for the commitment of marriage? Mayhaps you leave your affairs to fate and see what the universe brings.
I do enjoy the idea of letting the player/reader guide how their character reacts to different social and romantic situations, particularly those that allow for a more vulnerable exploration of your own internal processes. The specifics of how you approach interactions is a more complex one, and I'm still working on how that could be weighted in the game.
The other big question in my head is whether I should be realistic in the sense that the choices you make could be ill-received by the characters based on their personalities, or whether I should be idealistic in the sense that the characters react in the way that one hopes they ideally might in certain situations.
In other words, a dose of in-game "reality", or a balm to soothe the hopeful soul?
Personally, I lean more towards the latter. But perhaps that, too, is something that the player can choose.
And how the game reacts to the choices the player makes might actually link back to an earlier narrative decision in a really cool way. For example, in the case of romance options, there is a point in the story where we construct the player character's backstory and you get to choose whether you've had a previous relationship, are in a relationship now, or have never had a relationship before. Based on that, the choices you make with any of the ROs, in particular with regards to how you approach the romance interactions, will link back to:
in the case of a past relationship: why it ended
in the case of a current relationship: why it's going well/badly
in the case of never having been in a relationship: why it never happened, if at all relevant
If there IS a past relationship or current relationship, of course half the fun there is having them also show up in Talesmoth. And all of those little nuances that the choices lead to are also going to be fascinating to explore. So, say you choose from the above example "Kiss him; you're uncertain, but you want to keep him." This choice will ultimately lead you to a part of the story where you have to identify what, specifically, is making you feel uncertain - your fear of commitment, maybe your different goals/values, perhaps even your self-image, and from there, the game can tie that back to the previous/current relationship and/or the reaction of the specific RO you're dealing with. (Whatever is relevant based on the choices you've made.)
Obviously this means way more writing, but it is a fun idea to explore, and who knows what might come of it for the game? Moreover, it's not just a romance-exclusive feature. This could be applied to a range of other secret routes, relationships with characters, and so on. I do like the idea of that red string becoming evermore knotted and webbed as you continue to make decisions that impact past, present, and future.
Aside from that, I'm still working to refine the locations and settings in Talesmoth, in particular the locations that contain multiple places you can visit, like the parks or the marketplace.
Already I've started trying to include the secret route characters that can be discovered and interacted with in these different locations. For example, this is Rose, a cryptid smuggler that we can find at Lumen Lake on cloudy nights (yessssss, weather/time combo prerequisites are officially a go):
I tried something fun with her character where she has 3 different greetings and it randomizes/cycles when you go speak to her, so you'll get one of 3 greetings. Neat feature; not sure that it really should be used in the context of Rose's greeting, but now that I know how to do it, I may use it as idle chatter for certain NPCs, and maybe also as exhausted dialogue after you've finished everything you could ever say to an NPC.
(As a total random and completely unimportant aside, however, I can't use normal quotation marks with her in these greetings because of the way that you have to set them up, so the perfectionist in me is annoyed that all I have are the single ' marks instead of the " when she speaks. Oh, well. Nobody will notice, I'm sure.)
On a more personal note, I've been feeling a little too restless to be sitting at a computer all day working on these projects. I'm switching it back to pen and paper for a little while, making a big flowchart poster for the game. It might help me get a little more clarity than the limited computer monitor does. This should also help me sidestep the overwhelm and cut this elephant of a project up into bite-sized pieces so that I can tackle it in a more organized and consistent way.
Time to bust out my checklists and colorful pens.