I had my friend Henry playtest my game over the weekend. My target audience for my game is people who do not know much about the sinking of the Titanic, and as such Henry was a good choice within that audience.
The feeling of first confusion at what is going on and then panic at the realization continues to be well executed. In this latest playtest, Henry got in line for a lifeboat, and after being impatient, decided to try his luck in another line. Wanting to explore around a bit more, when he left that line he then saw that the first lifeboat had launched away from the ship and as such was no longer available. At that moment, he realized the severity of the situation and the pressure of time. In that way, Henry directly felt the same emotional narrative that the real passengers felt.
One of the main feedback I have had the past few times would be to include some form of mini-map for players to use as they navigate around. Now, the way Twine works I do not believe such a feature could be implemented. However, I will try to create a pdf map that players can use. For the time being, I have expanded the description of the in-game locations to try and help players understand where they are and where they can go. I have also added a page which explains the common directions used on a ship. Also Henry also struggled a bit with navigation, it was clearly less than prior playtesters who did not have these aspects.
Other added features include a lot of environmental aspects. The biggest ones include officers now fire rocket flares periodically, you have to now physically wait in-line to board a lifeboat, and the player is no longer directly given the time but instead has to manually look at their watch. These aspects mean that players always have something to do.
Since my previous version, I have added the narrative of Margaret Brown into the game as a fellow passenger the player can follow around. This took me longer than I had hoped, and it was tricky trying to figure out how to program to have her character be at certain locations at certain times and have her dialogue change to match. Currently, the player is not able to interact with her as much as I would like them to be able to, and I am not entirely sure on how to change this. Nonetheless, it is my hope that this basic framework would allow me to be able to add more quickly the few more additional characters I would like to have in the game.
There has been a lot of time spent bug fixing or just otherwise figuring out how the system works for the things I would like to implement. I think I am nearing the point where I have the knowledge on how to add everything I would like, however that does not mean that everything is smooth sailing. A lot of my time I suspect will still be bug fixing. Additionally, with every room being its own passage, every character or event or other feature I would like to add there makes the passage text itself longer and messier for me to retain understanding of. This is something I need to keep in mind as I progress.
I think the main question I have for right now is how much I should focus on environment/universal story telling (so having events that the main character experiences such as having a steward approach them, seeing rockets, overhearing passengers talk, etc.,) and how much should I focus on individual character story telling (having specific passengers that the player can follow around and see what happens)? I think the game should have both, but given the amount of time available the question becomes which right now should be the priority.
The current version can be played here:
https://aidenpin.itch.io/april-14-1912
The password is WhiteStarLine
