Preword
After reading the reviews for ‘The Sandman,’ I’ve decided to make a post-mortem for it!
The hope for this write-up is that it will give those who are interested in learning more about the game’s themes and purpose something tangible to latch onto. And of course, it’ll be the culmination that’ll finally allow me to put my breakthrough work to rest.
Where the idea came from
Over the last 2 years, I’ve had the misfortune of getting really far into making a new text game just for it not to be ready in time for the Spring Thing deadline. My original goals for these work-in-progress stories would slowly get muddied as time went on and I’d eventually lose inspiration for the whole thing by the time a new competition rolled around. There were especially a lot of life changes happening over 2022-2025 and I was finding it harder and harder to put time into creating something that had a purpose or a reason being on display. Motivation is quite a fickle thing.
The Sandman first floated into my thoughts back in February 2023. As a horror fanatic finally thawing out from the East Coast’s winter chill, I found myself in a headspace of wanting to create something dark, gloomy, and ephemeral.
During this particular time, as the dregs of winter typically brings out of me, I was pondering why human beings tend to be so afraid of death.
There’s of course the physical aspects of our bodies typically being hardwired to avoid it, but then there’s the interesting mental aspect of it. There’s so much dread that comes with realizing that each moment we exist we’re being hurtled towards a place of inevitable nonexistence that no one alive has ever truly seen.
Since birth, we’ve stood on top of the shoulders of ancestors that studied this Earth and made general physics, psychology, and natural processes common knowledge. Yet walking beyond the veil is still so primitive and is something that every person eventually has to do alone. It’s uncharted territory for the entire human race and that’s where I believe a lot of the fear stems from.
I personally used to fear death, but as time went on I realized that my conscious mind, as I know it, will never experience non-existence. I will always ‘be’ until I don’t. And since I’ll never experience the switch, this version of me, in my reality, exists forever—across all time and space. In this present moment, where there is neither past nor future—I am. And that’s enough.
So from those notions the Sandman was born.
The Sandman’s Purpose (spoilers ahead)
This game was originally a short story I made in a few hours about a mom and her children at the end of the world.
Instead of the downfall of humanity being caused by some nuclear explosion, doomsday situation, or maybe aliens? I thought it would be interesting if the catalyst ended up being something as innocuous as a sudden virus. One so powerful that it pulled people to sleep and shut their body down just as fast. Not enough time to react and not enough time to truly say goodbye.
This story was meant to study the brief moment of transition, capturing how someone in existence responds to suddenly being face-to-face with non-existence.
‘Veronica,’ or however the player chooses to name the mother, has laid before her 4 options. Keep herself awake, talk to the stranger, wake her daughter, or wake her son.
And with the combination of different choices that the player can make, the reader can effectively shape who this unexceptional woman is at the end of the world.
She was a conduit for the reader to see the divergent ways that humanity can manifest and explore how an average person may react to suddenly being dropped into an utterly hopeless and inevitable ending.
The achievements were meant to encourage the player to see all the different sides of ‘Veronica’ and through her, explore humanity.
- The mother that desperately wants her children to stay alive despite how it hurts them.
- The mother that gives in early because living is too tiring.
- The mother that realizes that saving her kids is futile so she lets them sleep and join the rest of humanity.
- The mother that just wants to talk with a homeless man and think about who she is before the end.
Names like Donald and Penelope are mentioned and these are names that hold no weight for the observer but mean everything to the characters. Their realities are entire worlds, just as our own are to us.
The goal was for the player to look inward, decide who they are, what makes life worth living, and appreciate the value of this present moment because the next moment is never promised.
Only after unlocking every achievement and experiencing every possible version of the woman ‘Veronica’ can become, the player can finally see the full contrast between merciful love and the desperate clinging to fleeting moments, which can drain joy from those still left.
All of the good and all of the bad reflected in one person, by the end she is all of those people in one. And she finally decides to stop the cycle by surrendering to it all and drifting into sleep.
Secret ending spoiler below
But she does this, only to awaken outside. The old man hints at this outcome in one of their conversations, mentioning the existence of immune beings.
During the final ending, the music in the Sandman evolves, becoming lighter, more hopeful.
“I’ll do it once more and then never again,”
This quote’s meaning is up for debate but to me it means that after seeing the heights of beauty and the depths of suffering, she makes a choice—that life is worth embracing.
Afterthoughts
Back during its conception, I was thinking of making the game a little more game-y where the family makes it to the bunker and the mother has to volley between helping the scientists create the cure while keeping her children awake.
But I scrapped that and ended up diving headfirst into philosophy because that was the core of what I wanted to express.
I felt a bit bad for making such a somber game for Spring Thing instead of my typical happy to melancholic entries, but I was just so glad to be out of that creative rut and finally have something to present that I just went in full force.
What I’ve learned
Because I had been sitting on this story for 2 years, I knew the ins and outs of everything I wanted to portray and say with its creation.
Having spent so many years pondering this philosophy and loving how horror games force players to make tough choices that I forgot that when players actually experience this game, they’re the ones making those tough choices!
I saw the kids, the old man, and the woman as a means to tell an open-ended story but I didn’t account for the fact readers tend to deeply connect with their protagonist and look for an optimal way to run through that saves the most characters as possible.
While it’s okay for that happy ending not to exist, looking back, I realize that I should have made the experience more guided and lead players down a stream rather than dropping them into an ocean and hoping they immediately understood the message I wanted to convey or explored the game as thoroughly as I intended.
I’ve also realized through the reviews that if a player doesn’t complete all the achievements and discover the secret ending, the game can feel like just an emotionally painful experience which was definitely NOT the goal haha.
Things to think about for my future works!
But just in case you played and needed to hear this, as creator I give you permission to explore the sadder routes with the kids. They’ll soon fall asleep, dream good dreams, and join the rest of the lights of humanity as together they all travel to a new state of being.
Conclusion
Overall, I love this game, I’m incredibly glad I made it, and I thank everyone that played it!
(Don’t worry, the next games that I’m thinking of making will definitely have more rays of hope than this one haha)
And thank you again to Spring Thing as a whole.
This festival is where artists come to flourish.