I hope everyone had a good Ludum Dare! It looks like we made quite a few games this past weekend I enjoyed myself, and I thought I would make a reflection post on my entry, “Emily”.

Now, while I like my own entry and think I did good work over the weekend, I am going to probably rake my entry over the coals. This is with the intention of improving on the design and looking to the future. Play it over here if you want to try it out before reading on.

Emily is a narrative game whose premise is that you are moving into a room in an apartment and the previous tenant’s belongings are still there. The game centers around examining the environment to get an idea of what went on with the last tenant, as well as interacting with her friends via phone to find out . So it is narrative-driven game with a bunch of clutter and phone interfaces that get you insight into the character of Emily.

Except that it really isn’t. Emily is what you get when you make a narrative-driven game without a clear idea of what the narrative is going to be. The game has a good premise, but it loses its way with that premise because I didn’t know what had happened to Emily until I wrote that final dialogue. Even then, when I wrote that dialogue, I needed something to quickly cap off the story so I could make the game end and submit it for the compo. I’d had two other characters planned, but by planned, I really mean that I had started out by selecting four names of characters to interact with, but had no idea how they were going to interact.

The characters are all pretty utilitarian. They exist to give the player a tiny bit of information and advance the game. It’s entirely terribly written, and all on the fly. I recognize this, and I chastise myself for this. I’m a narrative designer. The narrative is what I live for. Yet my entry has such a tacked on narrative that it’s embarrassing. I mean, Emily doesn’t even have any real character. She’s an environmental science grad student who is a bit flaky with her job assisting professors in classes.

Emily is a shell without a narrative. It’s a good shell, though. It’s one I want to work with. I had a lot of good ideas during the compo, many of which needed to be pushed aside. I spent a bunch of time coming up with an idea for the theme (ironically needing to take my own advice), and I started off working on making art. I didn’t even get around to making any code until the middle of Saturday. Much of the time was making sure I could model the things I wanted, and that the UI would work. I don’t spend a lot of time with Blender, so I wanted to be certain that it wouldn’t be a bottleneck. Perhaps it was, but I’m happy with what little I produced. I really wish there was more stuff to interact with, though.

Here are some of the things I wanted, but didn’t have time to even consider. It would be nice to have books that are actual books with pages of text. This would add a wealth of depth to Emily’s character. I also thought of the idea of moving furniture around the room. This would add a gameplay mechanic for what your player is initially starting out doing. The idea would be, then, that many of the clues to what’s going on be hidden behind or under things, including the initial clue of Emily’s school notes, which was cheated by having it instead visible just barely behind the dresser. Something else that is related to this is the ability to pick up and examine objects. This starts getting into areas of modelling that I’m a bit sketchy on. I admit that texturing is a bit of a weak point for me. I haven’t quite figured it out. Hence, everything is relatively flat shaded in this game. Coupled with being able to pick things up is the ability to put things down.

Finally, the most complicated thing I thought of was including Delilah. Delilah is a cat, and making a cat in the compo was right out. Not only is it a complicated model with a lot of issues for animation, but if I wanted Delilah to move around the room, I’d need a kind of cat AI, and I wasn’t touching that in just 48 hours.

Again, I think that Emily is a good proof of concept for me, and I can work with it. I need to figure out a real story to tell, not just the tacked on one that I did for the compo. Something with a bit more mystery and a better payoff. I don’t think I want Emily to need “rescuing” but rather more of a situation where the player gains entry into some secret goings-on. I’d like it if there could be some tiny hints to it in the newspaper, but that might be difficult with a classifieds section. I would like for the player to be able to call the other people in the paper, even still. Speaking of calling, I’d like to make the phone more like a phone and give it a contacts section, and perhaps some other apps to make it more useful. Maybe a camera mode, even. Another thing I was going to add was a separate dialogue interface. I had started on this in the wee hours of Sunday, and after a headache decided to forego it and use the message box. A specialized UI that includes dialogue choices would be nice.

If there’s anything else you think is missing, feel free to say. I accept any criticism as it comes. I enjoyed myself, certainly, and I hope you all did as well. Hope the judging goes smoothly for everyone. We all did a great job, regardless 😀

Tags: compo, criticism, postmortem, reflection