Nils Forstall CS377G P2: The Future We Deserve

ESCAPE by Nils Forstall

I love using my phone. I know people like me get a lot of criticism for always being online and never existing in the real world, but they don’t understand that through my pocket computer and computer computer, I can experience anything I want. I can be a Redbull Athlete doing exhilarating stunts pushing the limit of humankind; I can go to the most amazing concerts with phenomenal views; I can be playing with the most adorable cats. And all of that is way more interesting than living my life–I’m just sitting here scrolling on my phone. Why would I want to live that life? I’d much rather be doing all of that other stuff.

Overview

The initial concept of this game came from my fears, questions, and concerns about emerging virtual and augmented reality. To me, these technologies represent an ultimate fusion (and confusion) of the “real world” and the digital world–it’s the next level of immersion after our phones. In developing the initial concept for my dystopia, I wanted to take that to the extreme, imagining a world full of people so deeply embedded in an artificial existence that they don’t even know what the real world is. This dystopia obviously addresses the tension between what’s artificial and what’s real, it also evokes fascinating questions about identity–if we never live as ourselves, is there really a self to speak of? As I got further into developing my game, this question became more central and replaced the more action-filled content in the game’s early renditions.

Evolution of Design

The very first iteration of the game was a somewhat gauntlet-style branching fiction. From the get go, I wanted to open with discovering you were in the simulation and waking up in a facility. I was enamored with the idea that, if you’ve spent your whole life in the simulation, your brain wouldn’t be able to communicate with your real life body, which leads to a central plot-beat that you must take over a robot’s body to have agency.

The feedback I got on my earliest prototype was generally positive, especially regarding the suggestion after the player escapes that they may still be in a simulation. I also got a positive response to the loops the player would experience if they stayed in the simulation. 

I felt personally dissatisfied with the mechanics of how the player is able to so easily access the robot body which is the first thing they have to do before they can explore the facility or escape. For the next prototype, I decided to tackle this problem and create a better puzzle for how the player would access the robot body. I also wanted to add more loops to the game since I got positive feedback on them and personally found them delightful. Finally, I wanted to expand on the other plotlines for a more fulfilling story regardless of the player’s chosen direction. 

Looking ahead, I knew that I eventually wanted to try to create a parser fiction. In the introduction assignment, I found those games much more enjoyable as I felt more like an active agent rather than passively reading, and often unintentionally skipping, paragraphs upon paragraphs at a time. But for now I wanted to get the story right, so I decided to expand on these cards.

This next iteration of the game involved expanding and complicating the mechanisms and lore of the facility where the game took place. There ended up being many different types of robots patrolling the facility that you’d have to outsmart and outmaneuver to make it out. And then when you did make it out, you would loop back to waking up out of the simulation and begin again.

While I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of seeing how all of this came together, I found that the expanded complexity raised more questions than it answered. If I were to continue down this path, I’d have to flesh the story out a lot more. 

In my playtesting, I got similar feedback that the dystopia was compelling but they wanted to learn more. But I noticed that the interactions with the robots weren’t particularly driving this curiosity. They also expressed that they were very lost on who their character was. 

For the next prototype, I decided it was time to figure out whether this dystopia could work as a parser fiction. After wracking my brain for how to make the robot control, exterior body element of the game work, I eventually came to the realization that the story didn’t need it. While I was initially very committed to this idea for the realism of a rewired brain, I realized it didn’t actually address any of the core themes that I wanted this game to speak towards–namely identity and sense of reality. When I gave up that element, I realized that the robots, which didn’t speak to the dystopia and added a lot of complexity, could be eliminated completely. 

I still wanted a puzzle aspect at the center of the game which would give people a reason to explore, but I wanted it to relate more directly to the theme. I came up with what I thought was the simplest possible combination of these two elements: the player can find an item of theirs that triggers memories which bring them into their real body. Having something physical, personal, and sentimental as the catalyst for bringing the player into the real world immediately felt much more thematically relevant and rewarding compared to a potentially complex, multilayered puzzle about the facility itself. Ultimately I ended with the following paper prototype:

My playtests with this wizard of oz-ified paper prototype were largely successful. I felt players engaging with the story in a way I hadn’t seen previously. They were forced to picture the environments in their head in order to navigate around, getting a stronger sense of the liminal space to which they were. 

Many of them reported feeling a sense of loneliness as they wandered the facility, something that never came up in earlier iterations that involved robots. I immediately felt like this sense of loneliness was a step in the right direction as it more clearly parallels the sense that a lot of youth feel when spending so much time, energy, and attention living in a virtual space. I also like how it synergized with the loss of sense of self, since it rendered the player lost in more ways than one.

Another aspect that players responded to very positively was the ability to open other boxes to see other anchors. It built a sense of immersion and possibility for exploration that brought players into the world, and they seemed to enjoy making up little stories about the characters whose anchors they were seeing.

One key question I asked each playtester was how they felt regarding the scope of their choices. Knowing that parser fictions can often feel overwhelming, I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t so much choice that it was paralyzing. But I also didn’t want the scope to feel too small so that you don’t actually feel like you have control over the story. I was especially conscious of this fact because the nar

rative was no longer “branching” in the traditional sense–there’s only one real ending and to getthere, you have to hit a few key points. I repeatedly got the feedback that I had hit the sweet spot–player’s felt like they could make interesting choices that mattered without feeling paralyzed by too many decisions.

I constructed this prototype thinking it was the absolute bare minimum that could constitute a game, assuming that I’d go on to create more elements and puzzles to expand the game, but these playtests (and the Professor) indicated that this was a good scope for the final version of the game.

There was some clear room for improvement indicated by these playtests. Players wanted some sort of hint system so they wouldn’t get completely stuck. There was also a lot of discussion regarding how much the player should be able to know about the facility and the character’s past. Almost all of the playtesters said they wanted to know more, but many of them also expressed that they liked the mystery and vagueness.

Ultimately, the consensus seemed to be that they wanted more bread crumbs but not the whole story. They also wanted something more for the ending, when the character escapes the facility presumably “for real” and get’s to experience the real world for the first time.

 

For the next prototype, my main focus was translating this paper prototype into a digital, playable parser fiction. For the time being, I held off on incorporating the hints, more vivid descriptions, and more breadcrumbs. Before anything else, I wanted to get the core game right.

The playtests of the digitized parser fiction revealed that I had a lot of work to do to make this parser fiction fun and immersive–especially for players unfamiliar with parser fictions. It seemed that every playtest uncovered a different way players might try and fail to interact with their environment and play the game. Without a “help” menu where players could see exactly what actions they could do and how they could do them, I would often have to guide them to their solutions. Some players seemed quick to give up and suggested that they weren’t in my target audience since they weren’t familiar with parser fictions, but I rejected this notion because I myself hadn’t played any parser fictions until this assignment. In the very little experience with parser fictions that I have had, I’ve come to enthusiastically enjoy them, and I want to spread that enthusiasm to others.

In a subsequent iteration, I incorporated the ability for a player to ask for help, which appeared as follows:

Moving Around: To explore, type directions like north, south, east, or west. 

Looking Around: Typing look will re-describe your surroundings. Pay attention to what you see—details can hold important clues.

Interacting with Items: To investigate something specific, type examine followed by the name of the item, like examine poster. To pick things up, use take.

The playtest I conducted after this addition went the least smoothly of any of the playtests I conducted. Between every attempted action, the player typed “help” to review the menu and took many seconds to read through the options again. The playtester was unable to make it out of the very first piece of the game. Even with some guidance, he was generally confused and unable to navigate through the story.

I fully attribute this poor playtest to the failure of the menu to clearly and fully communicate the actions the player can take. There are a couple of actions not specified in this help menu that are necessary to progress in the game, such as the command “escape.” It is heavily hinted in the prose within the game that this is an action the player can perform–enough such that all playtesters were able to discover this by themselves. But in this playtest, since the player was given a specific set of actions they could perform, they understandably assumed that those were the only actions they could perform. Additionally, the long chunks of time the playtester took when repeatedly reviewing the help menu indicated that the actions were not clearly visible enough.

Based on these observations and the feedback I received, I completely rewrote the help menu:

Core Actions: You’ll need to use these constantly throughout the game.

     North (n), South (s), East (e), West (w), to move in a given direction.

     Look (l) to redescribe your surroundings.

     Examine {object} (x) to look at something more closely.

Additional Actions: You only need to use these once or twice to complete the game.

     Take {object} to pick something up.

     Open {object} to open something.

     Stand up to get out of a chair… or anything similar.

Helpful Tips: Some other things to keep in mind.

     You don’t have to open or close doors: just move in the direction of the door and you’ll go through.

     Try rephrasing actions that seem like they should work when they don’t.

     You can examine yourself to get a sense of your character.

     There are more actions you can try, such as smell or wait, but you won’t need them to complete the game.

     Finally, if you ever get truly stuck, you can type hint to get nudged in the right direction.

Additionally, if the player is in a state where they can escape, this appears:

Secret Action: There’s one more thing you can do right now since you’re feeling… off.

     Escape to escape

These changes make it easier to quickly see the options that are available and include every action you need to complete the game. This change also came with the highly request hint system, which conditionally checks where in the game you are and nudges the player in the right direction.

While the playtesters who were new to parser fictions faced some friction and difficulties, they still reported having a positive experience. But the most positive playtest came from a fan of parser fictions. He jumped into the game with both feet, requiring no extra guidance and being able to experience the game itself without all of the friction of a first-time parser. There were numerous moments where he let out verbal responses to reveals in the game: a satisfied “aaaahhh” when he escaped the first level of the simulation, a “ooo” when he discovered that he was still in the simulation, and a hearty “Aha!” when he discovered the connection between the three digit numbers on the doors and on the boxes.

For the final iteration of the game, I wanted to incorporate the feedback that I got earlier, prioritizing adding environmental cues and deepening the emotional impact of the moment when the character wakes up in the real world and escapes the facility for real. 

To add more context about the facility, I added a variety of papers on the desk in the store room. While the papers on top of the desk would express the outward facing facility, papers hidden in a drawer in the desk would reveal some more complications about the machine, addressing questions playtesters had about why their character was able to leave the simulation at all.

To deepen the emotional impact of the ending, I rewrote the prose for each action (with help from my poetic girlfriend), emphasizing that this instance of waking up in the pod is distinct and unprecedented. I also realized that previous iterations felt incomplete regarding the anchor—the pink stuffed bear, a crucial item that connects the character to her real self, prompting her awakening in the real world. Initially, the bear was forgotten once the character exited the facility, leaving her without a link to her past. To address this, I added a detail to the memory: the bear’s arm was ripped off when it was taken from her as a child, suggesting she kept it with her in the pod. When the player wakes up for real, they find the bear’s arm with them and take it as they leave, creating a more satisfying conclusion and hinting at a future where the character can reconnect with her memories and the real world.

Reflection

At the outset of this project, we were encouraged to procrastinate. Specifically, we were encouraged to keep with a low-fidelity prototype for longer so we could test our assumptions and iterate more rapidly. I respected that advice, and I’m extremely glad that I did. My choice to create a wizard of oz parser fiction was extremely influential to the course of my game. By conducting those tests, I was able to see the potential of this game not as a thriller/puzzle, fight robots game but as a more personal game giving the player more agency and connecting them to the story.

I almost wish I had procrastinated even longer. After the first iteration of the wizard of oz parser fiction went so well, I transferred essentially that exact story into code. Learning inform and implement the story was a large undertaking, and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to manipulate the base rolls of Inform to have it behave the way I wanted. But it clearly locked me into a very specific story. After that initial coding began, I became resistant to making large-scale changes–mainly because it would mean doing a lot more work and because it would mean undoing a lot of the work I had completed. This project truly gave me a newfound appreciation for rapid prototyping and iterating, and has convinced me that, sometimes, procrastination is absolutely the way to go.