This project is now my second attempt at making a narrative game. The first was P2 in CS247G which ended up being way overscoped so we ended up making an MVP of a tutorial section. Although I was incredibly proud of what my team had accomplished for that project, I was still itching to build more of the narrative and actually get to the meat of writing character backgrounds and motivations. Then came along this P2.
I don’t think I had realized until I sat down to write during the first week of this project that I have not written creatively in years. Of course I have thoughts about character motivations, characterizations, tone, pacing – but it’s one thing to critique and a wholly different thing to be the person writing. Every spare minute in my day I was at my keyboard brainstorming character traits, character arcs, story arcs, and anything else that I might want to include in my story. This is not at all what I was expecting, but to be honest, I’m not sure what I was expecting…
I wrote in my reflection on the write-up that I now have a newfound respect for VN developers, and days later that statement couldn’t be more true. I’ve been watching more VN Let’s Plays (who has time to play games?) while I do other work and now that I can see the person (or people) that sat down and wrote every line of dialogue and thought of every possible interaction and its consequences, I have so much more empathy for the work they do. Maybe that was the true empathy machine.
Crafting a good narrative is hard. Loops and arcs are easier said than done. Making the narrative make sense through the mechanics is even harder. I really tried to include a satisfying arc for one character (Cardinal Bruce) just to have a proof of concept for what dating and convincing others to vote for you would look like, but through playtesting I realized that there were elements of Conclave that didn’t necessarily line up with the narrative I had in mind. I had spent so long writing for Bruce that when his arc finally ended with one of my playtesters, they were still slightly confused as to why their relationship status was stagnant for most of the story and all of a sudden shot up when they made one or two correct choices. Suffice it to say, there are still balancing changes I’d like to make on the *actual* dating sim aspect of the game.
I have a feeling people are going to read this reflection and get the wrong idea so I’d like to clear it up—P2 was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. That I struggled to write, struggled to ideate, struggled to code and draw did not take away from the fun. I learned so much more from this project than I have during most projects during my time at Stanford, and I’m excited to see where this experience leads me.
