P2: Refined Prototype – Rachel Zhao

One player said the serpent appeared once, was forgotten, and then suddenly returned at the end, which felt disjointed. The snake now runs through the whole story. The fox names the stone wall where the yellow snake sleeps in the opening line, tenses when the boy wanders toward it on the first day, and fears it when he goes missing on Day 3. The ending now feels foreshadowed rather than sudden. Also, to eliminate this feeling pf disjoint, I set up every later moment in advance. The well, the snake’s wall and the wheat field appear in the opening. The rose is seeded from the first scene: the boy smells of a whole rose garden, and he whispers to the sky at sunset.

2. Empathy

A feedback is the writing lacked emotional detail. As the main goal of the project is to make readers feel empathy, we gave the fox a wound. Its mother died breaking her one law: never return to the same place at the same hour. Taming requires exactly that, so every four o’clock visit becomes an act of courage. The boy is first seen crying in the grass, and small details carry the emotion. He lines up pebbles while he waits and hums two notes when he is afraid.Also, there is one devastating beat after the loss: the day after the prince is gone, at three o’clock, the fox’s body still starts to feel happy, because it has learned the hour and cannot unlearn it.

3. Prose Style and Pacing

A feedback is that the passages were too long. Thus, we cut the text by a third and rewrote it in short, image-driven sentences. One player admitted skipping the story and reading only the choices. Now each passage opens with a few lines and one highlighted word, and the rest appears only after the reader clicks it. The choices come last, so players can no longer skip straight to them. Furthermore, long direct quotations from the source book were trimmed and broken up with the fox’s reactions.

4. Visuals and Sound

Although no playtester asked for background images, music and sound effects, I added scenes, music for each act, and sound effects tied to keywords, such as a gunshot or the snake’s hiss. The apple tree grows closer on screen as the fox sits nearer the boy. Each four o’clock meeting is marked by a three-note chime. On the first afternoon after he is gone, only two notes play.

5. Choices

The feedback comes that too many passages offered only one option, and some paired choices were essentially identical, for example “Give him your secret” vs. “Give it slowly, word by word.” Now, every passage now offers at least two options. Each pair of choices now sets two opposing impulses against each other: fear vs. love, holding on vs. letting go, honesty vs. mercy. For example: “Give him your secret now, while the light is still good” vs. “Hold it back one more hour. Once it is given, there is nothing left to keep him.” Even when two choices lead to the same passage, the story remembers which one you picked. It echoes the choice later: Humming his two notes on the way home on Day 1 means you recognize them in the dark on the last night. Carrying his scarf home on Day 2 decides where it is found after he is gone.

Questions:

1. Should I tell the players which paragraph they should go back to, so as to have different endings, after one ending has been revealed?
2. Should I add more twists and turns in the plot? I feel the story is peaceful, but maybe too plain sometimes.
3. If I want to move it to Ry’pen, what should I do with so many environment/emotional descriptions? From my understanding, Ry’pen is suitable for a lot of dialogues. However, this IF does not have a lot conversations.