Broke Down by saguaro
Broke Down is a Twinestory about tearing shit up and getting off on it.
The basic structure is super minimal, but you can increase the prose by several levels to uncover different layers of story. I used a number of Leon Arnott's macros, which are documented in the source.
FYI, this game contains profanity and violence and a conversation about scat. If you are familiar with my work you are already aware of my affinity for profanity.
I plan to release a post-compo version because I'd like to add more interactions. The best routes are the ones I wrote first, so if you want a recommendation I'd say go town, then casino, then ho, then geek, then kill everybody. YMMV.
Update: postmortem: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/04/30/broke-down-postmortem/
The basic structure is super minimal, but you can increase the prose by several levels to uncover different layers of story. I used a number of Leon Arnott's macros, which are documented in the source.
FYI, this game contains profanity and violence and a conversation about scat. If you are familiar with my work you are already aware of my affinity for profanity.
I plan to release a post-compo version because I'd like to add more interactions. The best routes are the ones I wrote first, so if you want a recommendation I'd say go town, then casino, then ho, then geek, then kill everybody. YMMV.
Update: postmortem: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/04/30/broke-down-postmortem/
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall | 3.40 | 334 |
| Audio | 1.48 | 1045 |
| Fun | 2.69 | 826 |
| Graphics | 2.93 | 638 |
| Humor | 3.07 | 157 |
| Innovation | 3.19 | 494 |
| Mood | 3.56 | 126 |
| Theme | 3.60 | 492 |
Awesome stuff.
While the expanding text gimmick sounds interesting, in practice it's only a bother to read the same text repeatedly with some alterations - most of which are just filler text which don't really add anything to the experience, in my opinion. Perhaps it would be more interesting if all hidden text actually added something and could not be displayed when you first read the text - for example, requiring you to have read certain other parts to 'unlock' the hidden text. As it is now, I eventually ended up just expanding everything to max size every time after a certain point, so I wouldn't have to reread the same thing thrice every time.
The plot feels very disjointed, chaotic and random. While to some extent this is justified by the subject matter, it feels like the story is distorted beyond what the protagonist's perspective would provide - like if the world was a dream and simply had no logic. Even with the protagonist's mental state it would make sense for it to feel like one continuous story, but rather it seems like a collection of separate snippets, as if you are skipping three pages for every page you read in a book.
@protensity - The CSS was mine, but the custom macros were Leon's. List in the postmortem:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/04/30/broke-down-postmortem/
I wonder what it would be like if you only unlocked higher-detail text modes as you complete the story multiple times. So that maybe the bare minimum is all you get that first go, and it blossoms out from there.
Such a sad little robot. At least that's my theory ;).