P2: Tiny Playable Prototype – Sabrina

My current concept is a game where you play as a player who is trying to fix their relationship with their grandmother as their grandmother’s memory fades. The idea is the player will have conversations with their grandmother that timeskip every couple months or so as their grandmother’s memory slowly becomes worse.

For this prototype, I playtested a smaller version of one of these conversations, initially on paper, then ported into renpy (which is the medium I ultimately playtested with Jessica).

My main note outside of the story was that I noticed the medium allowed players to quickly read and choose options, making it feel like their decisions were potentially less impactful.

Jessica provided a lot of helpful feedback about the story and concept.

On the positive side, she mentioned the choice to how to respond when grandma demonstrated a little memory loss was emotional and felt very real. She also mentioned how she liked the choice of gardening as a metaphor, as it felt like there could potentially be visual metaphors to represent the deteriorating mental space.

The core weakness was the character’s voice and depth of interactions. Jessica mentioned that she wished the grandmother had more personality to avoid feeding into stereotypes and it make it feel more like a story, rather than feeling information. She also mentioned she wanted more positive choices in the way the character interacts with their grandmother, as it would make the relationship feel more meaningful.

The main questions I have moving forward are:

1. How can I develop the grandmother’s voice? What personality does she envelop and how do I avoid writing her into a stereotype?
2. What is the best medium of communication? The current format (renpy, visual novel) feels like it lacks emotional weight and doesn’t deliver the story in the most effective way.
3. How much do I want to balance external vs. internal conflict? The main character could also be going through their own issues, which could provide contrast / tension to mending their relationship with their grandmother. Does the relationship start fraught or should it be more positive, then deteriorate?
   1. For example, if more of the story focused on the main character, there could be choices of whether they even want to visit their grandmother.