(Recap part 1)

Story and style

Limited content may explain some of the writing’s inconsistent style. My idea was to be all over the place regarding story and style. The game is a biography with a pretty general theme (truth vs lies) and I intended it to touch lots of genres: school drama, teen romance, political thriller, silly over-the-top comedy, psychokiller horror and more.

Lots of alternative storylines were planned for each section of the game, so that the player in one playthrough could be a child animal harmer, a teen seducer and an adult psycho, and the next playthrough have him be a mischievieous child, a solitary teen and an adult corrupt politician.

This would be more obvious if all these storylines were available. But I wrote half of them.

Stop and plan

With 8 hours to go I was pretty sure I couldn’t do it on time. My writing grind to a halt. But then a couple of hours later I was churning out the least bad best writing in the game (late section, dear players; see if you find the nickname list). The trick is: stop and plan. I stopped improvising content, sat away from the computer, thought thoroughly the scenes I was going to write the rest of the day, wrote down some notes and structure and had the most pleasant time of the compo writing what I had planned.

I don’t know if I’ll do a Ludum Dare again, but I’m really happy I did it and I’m not really disappointed with the results. Thanks everyone!

Tags: interactive fiction, Twine