I learned a lot from the experience of making this game! I’ve written a lot before, but never an interactive game, so it was an interesting to explore this form of writing. Before making an IF game, I was intimidated by the prospect of making so many different paths and choices, and I wasn’t sure how to keep them all straight. I really liked the activity we did when this project was introduced, when we made IFs on cards, since it helped me view the process as more approachable and manageable.
When actually making the IF, I found it was more difficult to restrict myself from making too many choices and paths. I had to narrow my scope to keep it from ballooning beyond my control because it was so fun to come up with alternate routes and paths for people to take. I ended up finding a happy medium by providing some dialogue options (that lead to the same place, but offer different experiences of playing the character by allowing the player to set the tone and attitude the character has).
When making my IF game, I figured that by the nature of making a mystery-oriented game, the fun would be mostly narrative and discovery. An unexpected, delightful thing I noticed while playing was how much players enjoyed the role-playing aspect. In about half of my playtests, testers would say lines out loud, mimicking the tone or demeanor of certain characters (ie, using a valley girl accent to say Stacy’s lines). It was fun to see players get into the character archetypes ahead of them, and get attached to characters (which, unfortunately, made the deaths of characters worse). It was really cool to see people engage with something I made in that way, and I had a lot of fun watching playtests because of it.
An interesting thing I found myself thinking about when making my IF game was the balance between a game and fiction. While an IF is technically both, I found myself constantly flipping on whether or not I wanted to make it more of a game or more of a narrative. For this assignment, I settled on a more narrative, choose-your-own-adventure style approach. If I get a chance to come back to this game, however, I would love to incorporate more mechanics, like a puzzle or exploration system for moving about the town between different loops.
Overall, I really loved making an IF and playing other’s games, and I learned a lot through this process! IFs are definitely a form of game I will be coming back to so I can make more and keep building on what I’ve learned.