P2: The Future We Deserve — i dream of dragons

“i dream of dragons” 

 

Hook

The human population has dwindled – only seven small villages scattered at the foot of a mountain remain, with no other civilization in sight. 

People called it a plague. Punishment from a higher being, the village Elders had said. Eighty years ago, it swept through the world, silent and merciless, turning life to dust and leaving few survivors.

A curse followed shortly after: the inability to dream.

Play through the eyes of Dan-bi, a young adventurer, who leaves their village to search for the truth and an explanation behind the suffering inflicted on their people. The world is not kind, this much is known, but for reasons that may be darker – and perhaps, simpler – than previously thought. 

 

IF Link

P4 version (refined): play on itch.io

P2 version: i dream of dragons

 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – spoilers below, read after playing – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

 

Premise + Concept 

This idea came about from things I’ve been thinking about a lot, especially within the past two years. During quarantine, I rediscovered my love for fantasy and fiction through video games, and got knees-deep in fandom culture, fanfiction writing, and world-building. I spent a lot of time daydreaming, which was something I found that I had not done freely since I was much younger. Subconsciously, I had internalized things that mentors, parents, and friends had either explicitly told me or implied  – that daydreaming, reading fantasy/fiction, and engaging in nerdy fandom culture was “childish”, “foolish”, and “a waste of my time”. 

When I do have them, my dreams and daydreams have always been (and still are) extremely vibrant, dystopian, fantastical and highly unrealistic. But as I grew older, I always attributed some form of guilt or shame to them, thinking that I was “too old” to be living in my imagination. 

At some point, I had internalized other people’s negative perceptions of dreaming and imagining fictional worlds so much that there was a period of time where I stopped dreaming altogether. 

I didn’t realize I was mourning this loss until I rediscovered that side of myself through video games, fantasy books, and animated films during quarantine, and I realized how foolish it was of me to lock away that part of me in the first place. So I decided to write a story about this process of growing up and losing a defining characteristic of my childhood, and the relief and beauty in its rediscovery. 

 

Characters, Names, Terms + Explanation

I wanted to incorporate a bit of my own culture in terms of naming the characters. All character names, village names, and other game-unique terms are romanized versions of Korean words. 

Though the names of the villages are not stated, each of the seven villages is named after one of the seven deadly sins. 

Each character’s name is significant, and the meaning of their name is intended to complement the meaning of their assigned guardian’s name.

• Dan-bi (단비, pronounced danbi)
  • Role: Main character
  • Meaning: long awaited rain, spring rain, timely rain
  • 22 years old, gender neutral
• Ho-su (호수, pronounced hosu)
  • Role: Main character’s guardian
  • Meaning: lake
  • Appearance: Blue-white dragon in spirit form, elderly woman as one of their human forms
  • ?? years old, gender neutral
• Ja-yu (자유, pronounced jayu)
  • Role: One of the San-ai living in the forest from Ch. 1
  • Meaning: freedom
  • Appearance: Jade green eyes
  • 8-9 years old, female
• Bit-na (빛나, pronounced bitna but phonetically bichna)
  • Role: Catalyst for Dan-bi’s journey from Ch. 0
  • Meaning: shining
  • 14 years old, female
• Yi-sul (이슬, pronounced eeseul)
  • Role: One of the San-ai in Ch. 2
  • Meaning: dew
  • Appearance: lithe, golden-skinned young man
  • 20-22 years old, male
• An-ghe (안개, pronounced angae)
  • Role: Yi-sul’s guardian
  • Meaning: mist, fog
  • Appearance (not shown): a large phoenix-like bird
  • ?? years old, gender neutral
• San-ai (산 아이, pronounced sanai)
  • Term for the children who were born and raised in the mountain and whose parents left the seven villages 
  • Meaning: mountain child

And a rough sketch of the main character’s appearance and garments, inspired by traditional Korean clothing.

 

Playtest

I had a lot of difficulty doing iterations for my project since I missed a class and was very sick for a few days. I got to playtest the most during the very first few iterations of my game, but that was only when I had only a few pages on Twine that focused on building up the setting. I playtested with Miranda, Annie, Jasmine, Ember, and Alejandro (the only one I remembered to get a picture of). 

The main feedback I got from these preliminary playtests was a bit of reassurance in the type of prose-like language I was using. I was worried that my longer sentences and imagery would be a hassle to read (which I think is the case now that my game is… very long) but they said that given the nature and setting of my IF, the language worked in my favor. 

I didn’t get to playtest much during the middle of my process because I was sick, so I unfortunately had most of my game written out by the time I got around to playtesting again. This time, I had some friends play through my game during a study session we had at Tresidder.

 

My game was long and neither of them had a lot of time, so we only got as far as testing chapters 0 through 2. Chapter 3 remains untested, which is why I feel it is a lot rougher than the rest. Some of the most valuable feedback I got are little tweaks to make monologues, thoughts, and dialogue between characters feel more natural. This is usually the most valuable feedback to me when I have beta readers for my creative writing pieces – I’m usually much more comfortable writing setting and imagery and more awkward with dialogue, and what sounds natural to me conversationally may not be the case for others. Another piece of advice was that my writing was a bit long, which I know is definitely one of my habits. As they went through the chapters and the pages, it was harder for them to read everything since the story was long. I tried my best to cut down but was a little limited on time, so I couldn’t do as intense of a cut as I think I needed.

 

Reflection

I had a lot of fun writing this story. It felt similar to the chaotic writing process I take when I write short stories and fanfic, but I think the most major shortcoming I had was precisely because of I approached it similarly to my previous writing experiences: I wrote a very linear storyline and did not give the player a lot of room and freedom to explore different routes in the story. I had difficulty making the shift from creating a story for a player rather than a reader, though I was aware of the differences. The main things I would do differently would be: 

• Incorporate more choices for the reader (I only ever included one or two choices at a time, never more), and 
• Write at least one more alternate ending to give more agency to the player and maintain integrity to the nature of an interactive fiction game

 Other things I could have done better are:

• Cutting down on my writing, or at least using shorter sentences to keep the player engaged
• Starting the creation process earlier, playtesting more, and iterating through more fleshed-out versions

I needed to put in more time to unlearn some of the habits I had from previous writing experiences, learn how to approach writing for a game differently, and then execute.

Some other improvements that I think would have been nice-to-haves:

• Writing some code to have chunks of dialogue appear when the user presses a keyboard key, instead of having all the dialogue display on the screen at once
• Incorporating audio like sounds of birds, trees, and water during the scene where the main character is walking and thinking 
• Incorporating audio cues that would specifically correspond to dream flashbacks or the presence of Ho-su, the main character’s guardian
• Incorporating visual elements to break up the large chunks of text