After difficulty finding a strong voice for my characters (among other things), I pivoted to a new idea, based on themes from La La Land and Past Lives about relationships that aren’t meant to be.
For this playtest, I wanted to test the core components of my story: the initial setup, the medium, and the initial decisions. I wrote the first two scenes (the job application and planning her first day) and set up the game in Twine.
I play tested with Jeffery. While he does enjoy video games, he is not a huge fan of narrative games, but emotionally, might fall into the range of my target audience.
Overall, the playtest went relatively smoothly.
The key takeaways from both observations and player feedback:
- The medium works well and the voice is accurate in a sort of sympathetic way. In particular, the affordances of a journal are interesting, such as a strikethrough.
- However, because it is a journal, there’s some tension in narrating current events. The current version had a “mailbox scene” which occurred live: it’s funny, but forces the reader to suspend their disbelief.
- The journal medium also allows other affordances, such as finding old memories, which could be interesting to explore.
- There are a couple mechanical points that could be improved by greater affordances (eg: choosing which photo option is a little confusing, difficult to click through all options).
After this playtest, I continued writing my story keeping the tone consistent, but focusing on adding choices that emphasized both the feeling of loss and forcing the reader to reflect. While I did not add additional memories, I am considering it for future iterations.
