Creative Log #1

Welcome to my creative log! This is the first one. It's a log of whatever thing I'm currently working on.

Lately, I've been working on an interactive narrative/game thing. Tentatively, it's called Road Trip on Route 13. I'm messing around with narrative generation and trying to experiment with how changing around simple things like the start and end points of a journey can turn a story on its head. For instance, a story that starts at a hospital and ends at an abandoned cabin feels much different than one that begins at a country church and ends at an airport. Add in some character defining stuff that can also vary quite a bit, and you very quickly get a bunch of very different stories. At least, that's the idea.

All of the variables are randomized and laid out to build a story. Certain symbols are set up as important to the character and are programmed to show up during random story beats in order to create connections and make the story feel more cohesive. I've actually got no clue how well these story moments will fit together. I suspect that some will work pretty well, some will fall completely flat, and most will land somewhere in the middle. It's something to dial in.

I try to keep things fairly open-ended and invite the player to make their own conclusions and connections. This player-inclusion is something I'm really interested in. I want to empower the player so that they can act as something like a co-author of the story they're playing. But in order to do that, I still need to maintain some direction in the story. Otherwise, as anyone who grew up playing with MadLibz knows, shit turns to nonsense real quick. That's fun with MadLibz, because, you know, random nonsense is the point. But what I'm trying to do is generate a cohesive narrative that the player helps shape.

To try to wrangle things a bit, I ask the player to make judgements of the story. These judgements inform the game system about the mood of the overall story, which is information that the game then uses to set up relevant plot points. So if the player is getting spooky vibes, the game will be more likely to give them present scary moments later on, and same thing for romantic stories or nostalgic ones. Hopefully this helps focus things.

All of this calls for a lot of writing. Like a lot of fucking writing. I'm almost done with the opening, and it's already over 2000 words, and I originally wanted to have a few different openings. Guess we'll see how much I actually wanna write as time goes on. Luckily, it's all fairly concrete writing, which is pretty easy to produce, but it's still a lot.

Okay, I'm going to call it quits here. Next time, I'll get into some of my creative inspiration for all of this.

(gah! I just realized that I never even discussed why I was working on this website. whoops! that was supposed to be post numero uno. oh well)

Thanks for reading! :)

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