Who:
I playtested over Zoom with my college friend, Kirin. As someone also familiar with Batman and who enjoys creative writing and visual novels, Kirin was someone in my intended audience who I thought would understand some of the nods I include to Batman (e.g., “Bryce Wyne,” manor with a cave filled with bats underneath, a reclusive and famous loner) and could help me with the narrative.
Well:
- I noticed there was a lot of laughter, which was great! Especially at the parts of the game that pulled from parts of Batman lore, signaling the evocative narrative strategy was working.
- She had such a great reaction to the reveal that the human character was a nod to “Bruce Wayne.”
- A lot of strong positive emotions were expressed during some of the more bat community-centric scenes.
- She liked that the options ranged from the more social interaction-leaning to the more emo, anti-social ones.
- She liked when the narration style reminded the player they were in the world of bats, playing a bat (e.g., “Fonk shrugged a wing”).
- The playthrough was about 12 minutes in length, which I felt was pretty good for a prototype and still could have room to grow the branches.
Not as well:
- As this prototype was still pretty rough, some of the branches were not as built out yet.
- There was some confusion over the wording of an option (e.g., to go look for something the main character had “lost”). I realized I had wanted this “lost” thing to be the mechanism for how the character turned into a bat, but I think I could reword this.
- The realization by the other bats that Bryce was a human-as-a-bat, even if she chose the option not to reveal this information. We talked about possibly having multiple endings, where this information isn’t necessarily revealed.
Planned changes and why:
- Reveal Bryce’s identity at the very end of the game and have the player AND main character solve the mystery of who he is as he goes along.
- This change was actually an initial brainstorm idea I had and I ran it by Kirin. While she couldn’t compare whether she would have preferred this version of the story over the one she played, she did say she feels a game grabs the player’s attention more if they don’t know they’re playing as. I’ll try this out for the next playtest, and see how players like it.
- Learn what actually turned him into a bat
- It seemed like this mystery around how Bryce turned into a bat didn’t have any closure for my player, since you never learn how this happens in the first place. Kirin brought up the manor house as a place to look for clues where the player finally finds out why this transformation happened (i.e., as a joke because Bryce writes about “Bat-Lord,” a rival writer out to get him).
- Deeper reason for fear of bats
- Kirin suggested offering a more personal experience behind Bryce’s fear of bats might make the player’s emotional connection to him and his personal growth stronger (rather than just saying he’s afraid they’ll suck his blood).
- Have multiple dead-ends/shortcuts to endings
- Kirin said she personally liked having multiple endings because it felt like the player’s choices mattered more. She thought it would be interesting to explore what would happen if Bryce did NOT overcome his fear of bats, or if he didn’t become human again.
- Build out some of the more “negative” consequences branches
- Kirin seemed to be making choices based on how she thought Bryce Wyne would act (from what she knew about his reclusive, anti-social personality). To honor the player’s agency, instead of railroading them (immediately) back to my main plotline, I want to build out the negative consequence branches a little more.
- Have each of the different bat types introduce fact(s) about their bat (i.e., pollinators, fruit, vampire, culturally significant around world)
- Kirin was disappointed that we didn’t get to meet any of these other bats. Instead of having our main bat guide, Fonk, introduce us to these types of bats, it might be more powerful to have Bryce meet them.
Note: Because of limited capacity before the in-class playtest on Wednesday 10/21 for a lot of changes, I decided to just focus on the bolded changes, which I believe had the biggest change on the structure of the story (i.e., find out identity at end of game through clues, plus how turned into bat). I want to see whether this new story structure resonates with other players. That way, I can decide which story structure works better before I begin really fleshing out some of these other proposed changes.
Questions after playtest:
- I’m intrigued by the idea of having multiple endings, but I also want to be able to keep this story and its scope manageable. Does creating dead-ends or shortcuts to final possible endings for certain choices balance this well?
- I’m trying to think of a compelling, personal experience Bryce could have with bats that would lead to a crippling fear of them. Any ideas?
