When the theme was announced for this Ludum Dare, Britt and I were less than impressed.  It seemed generic and not to really allow for interesting theme-based gameplay, only narrative and setting.

A lot of people have been commenting that they didn’t get how our game, Wayward, fit into the theme–either because they didn’t complete the game, or that it was intentionally pretty subtle.  Our sighs of despair at the announcement of the theme were that of understanding what would come of it: a list for which I took the time to write on a whiteboard with a caption “DON’T DO THESE, THEY’RE TOO OBVIOUS.”

The list of obvious choices and what not to do (for us!) for this jam:

1. Pull the rug out from under the player at the end and shout in their faces “YOU WERE THE MONSTER ALL ALONG!!!”
2. “Goomba Simulator”, or, adopting the opposite role of the typical protagonist.
3. Kaiju

What this meant for us was that we had to come up with an interesting and virtually impossible narrative and setting for a hard as nails theme.  We didn’t want to be obvious, we wanted to be clever.  The first idea, in this regard, was a monster truck arena game called You are the Monster(truck).  More and more ideas that seemed more punny than anything (including, I fuck you not, playing as Monster Energy drink pouring into somebodies body), but we couldn’t resolve on anything.

We landed on the idea that we would make the player, not the main character, the monster.

Ethics and moral questioning aside, Wayward is a game about finding and killing the monster that stole the babies from your village.  A trail of what we can assume are said babies’ blood leads the way, and you explore the Wintery wonderland we set up, fighting other monsters along the way.

One thing I did to push the theme along the course of the adventure (before the climax) was to make fighting the monsters completely optional if you were to study your surroundings.  The minor monsters in the game are territorial and only spawn if you get very close to a checkpoint-campfire.  Some players have realized this, but naturally, in a game where you have a bow, you feel inclined to aggro the enemy anyway and take them out.

After a few encounters, skipped or not, you finally reach the end of the blood trail.  Here is where I wanted to avoid the “HAHA GOTCHA, YOU WERE THE MONSTER!”  Instead of killing the mother and having a bunch of babies pop out from the brush and wimper and make you feel bad about what you just unknowingly did, I have the mother and the cubs shown in plain site around a pool of blood.  No more baby.  The aggro range is very small for this, and you cannot aggro simply by shooting the mother.  At this point, a player wary of the theme will or will not come to understand.

A moral side note on monsters:

The entire story and question of “Who is the Monster?” can be realized at this point.  The Beast is the monster in the main character’s eyes for eating the babies.  From the beast’s perspective, there are no other animals in the game, so it was killing out of the necessity to feed its young.  The main character is the Monster from the perspective of the Beast, and depending on her moral standing, also the Player.

Which leads to the actualization of the theme.  Objectively, if the Player of the game finishes the deed, she is the Monster.  My favorite comment on the game yet was “It was very beautiful, but I’m sad you made me kill the mother at the end.”

I didn’t make you do anything.  The only way to not be the Monster is to not finish the game and just turn it off.

-C