Premise
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This bare-bones UI is home to all that remains of Aurelia, a failed space colony for Earth’s climate refugees. The player is a young historian, recently graduated from school and working as an archivist for a government project. At the beginning of the game, they sign an NDA, signaling to them that their work is not public—for whatever reason…
The game mechanics are simple: the player is presented with a set of folders containing audio files. Each file contains a voice recorder snippet from Aurelia. The recordings are anything and everything: private conversations, public radio announcements, church choirs singing at services, government debriefings… every new file paints a new picture of the residents of Aurelia. As the player plays on, a few key figures emerge from the recordings:
- Congressman Ronauld: gained his wealth back on Earth from the shipping industry, partially funded the founding of Aurelia, disliked among the community but somehow keeps getting reelected
- Laurice: The mother of a young daughter—one of only a few children born in Aurelia. Her husband’s family raised the funds to send her and him to Aurelia, forcing her to leave her own parents behind to protect her daughter (who she was pregnant with when leaving Earth).
- Josie and Will: a young couple who met in university studying electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. They were offered space in Aurelia in exchange for their skilled labor.
Yet, the records kept by each player tell drastically different stories about the true nature of Aurelia. As the player, you must decide which story to believe, preserving history in whichever form you feel most compelling based on the characters’ stories. Each selection impacts the options you are given in the future, so circle back if you don’t feel like a file is accurate in its current state.
Player conflict
The main point of conflict in the story is how to player wants to preserve history. Do they want to look through every file and try to find the most accurate story? Do they want to latch onto a single character and believe their version of the past? It is hugely up to the player how much information they accumulate about events before they step into the role of writing the past.
Endings (TBD)
I am still deciding on what the ending will look like, which will have a lot of influence over how the playable character factors into the story. I need to iron out exactly what type of commentary I plan on making about the writing of history in order to wrap it up in a cohesive way!
Map
Timeline
(action items to be finished by listed day)
10/20:
- Version 2.5
- Similar to version playtested on 10/18
- Initial characters sketches for:
- Playable character
- Congressman
- Laurice
- Jose
- Will
- Anyone else? Need to decide
- Tiny prototype in Twine
- Get a feel for what building graphics looks like
- Read up on integrating a semblance of variables using HTML/JSS
10/22:
- Full story event map
- Key events (things that every player should run into)
- Satellite events (where players can diverge)
- Ending (decide if there will be one or multiple and what they/it will be)
- Test audio mechanism
- Generate one or two audio files
- Figure out how to make different parts inaudible (static?)
- Will I be recording these myself or generating them using AI text to speech?
10/25:
- Playtest
- Get feedback on audio component, initial visuals in Twine, and current state of the story
- Try to find someone who does have a background in IF!
10/27:
- WRITE!!
- Have all story components written out by end of the weekend—will need the rest of the week to get Twin graphics finalized and audio files generated
- Should have a fully completed story by in class this day
- Visual
- Should have bare-bones of the visuals built out and a plan for how the rest will be implemented (basic understanding of Twine to the point of knowing how everything will be coded)
10/29:
- Audio
- Have final versions of all audio files
- Visuals
- Big components of environment coded up
- Should only have small, aesthetic tweaks left but the game should be fully playable in Twine
- (if time) playtest the audio and visual components!
10/31:
- Small changes
- Tweaks from last playtest
- Added details to build out the characters or the storyline
- Visuals
- Biggest jump from 10/27→ 10/31
- Spend a lot of time in the last few days on aesthetics!
- Final writeup, etc.
