Aiden P2: Playtest Prototype
The main ‘refinement’ I did since class was transferring the game from a paper playtest into a digital version. Outside of class, I playtested the new digital version with a friend of mine at Stanford. The main thing I learned was where there were bugs which had to be fixed, which in turn helped me understand better how exactly Twine’s programming works. Overall, I felt like this playtest told me that I am on the correct path.
Since I mostly only had the time to transfer the paper playtest into a digital version, some of the feedback I received was similar to the paper version. prioritized making the world of the game, namely incorporating the ship’s layout and the general timeline of the sinking. Naturally however, the player wanted to be able to interact more with the other characters in the game. Despite this, the game as a whole still seemed to be enjoyable and engaging to the player in both cases. Given this already, I can only imagine how much more engaging and compelling the game will be once these additional features are added. With the environmental framework created, this should be easier to implement.
The main question I have at this time is how to make sure the text I am working with does not become too unwieldy. The way I currently have the game structured is that each passage corresponds to a location, and the player can move between locations. If, as I plan, I intend to then have different characters also at different locations at different times, it seems that the most straightforward way would be to bake all that information into every single location. However, that would also make these documents way too long and potentially in the future making even myself unable to understand what I wrote.
