A Rock’s Tale Post-mortem
I’m going to kind of fumble my way through this, but I think it will be a useful exercise for me to reflect on the process, feedback, and results of A Rock’s Tale, especially as it was my first ever stab at writing interactive fiction. Hopefully it will be interesting or insightful to some of you out there.
Origin:
As I have mentioned elsewhere in these forums, the concept for A Rock’s Tale came to me a couple of years ago in an exercise to devise the “worst” possible protagonist for a video game. This inadvertently led me to discovering this IF community and it sort of clicked that interactive fiction would be a great medium to tell this story. As I am not much of a writer, it took a long time to get myself over the hump of getting started. About a year and a half ago I took a stab at figuring out Twine but I quickly became very overwhelmed by the format I wanted this story to take and, at the time, gave up. Fast forward to a month and change before the 2025 IFComp deadline and I found myself unemployed with nothing but time on my hands, and I realized it was now or never.
As far as inspirations go I don’t have anything concrete to draw on, which ultimately may have shown in the final piece, but I think Over the Garden Wall planted some seeds in my brain, notably with the naming scheme for my characters. The episode where Wirt and Greg meet the villagers in the tavern who’s identities were reduced to their professions stuck with me. I wanted the characters in A Rock’s Tale to start feeling like that, but have some layers to peel back as well. How well I succeeded at that is for players to decide.
Process:
From the start, I wanted A Rock’s Tale to consist of characters that could be encountered in any order so each player could have a sort of unique experience. With no coding background this proved to be a bigger challenge than I anticipated, but with a plateful of spaghetti code I managed to make it work (to varying levels of success). This also led the passages to be formatted like little islands, each connecting back to a common passage from various points. I can imagine that there might have been a better way to go about this, but it did help me in the development process as I was able to create really simplified branches for each character to make sure everything worked before actually writing anything substantial. I’ll include a picture of the passage structure here since I think it’s interesting to look at story structure, and maybe some of you all will have thoughts on it.
My testing and pre-release feedback came from folks who were largely unfamiliar with IF, which I think had it’s own strengths and weaknesses. I would be quite interested to become more involved next year with exchanging testing with other authors as I feel more confident to do so, and I imagine receiving feedback from other authors would be especially valuable.
Pre Results Feedback:
One of the most pleasant surprises of joining IFComp was the community. I have participated in a lot of game jams in the past, and no feedback from those has even come close to the thoughtfulness I found in the IFComp judges’ reviews. I feel like I stumbled into a community of people who are truly passionate about this art form, and it has motivated me to continue to participate when originally this was going to be my one and only IF piece.
As far as the actual reviews that A Rock’s Tale received, I think they exceeded my expectations. Aside from a curt or seemingly bad faith review here and there, people engaged with the story and writing at some level and had very constructive things to say about it. This is where I found that the “random encounter” format might have failed some, either by making some encounters repetitive or adding tedium to playthroughs. It may have been too ambitious of a format for my first go, but I’m glad I learned something because of it. I also learned that I inevitably signaled my game as an “ending chase” game without meaning to. While I shouldn’t spoon-feed players with the intended experience, I could stand to learn from games that did this tactfully and clearly. All in all, I have nothing but respect for the folks that play lots (or all!) of the submissions and find the time to write meaningful reviews on top of that.
Post Results Thoughts:
It was a little bittersweet to be sooo close to making it into the top 20, but with such a stacked collection of games, I am very proud that my little rock game managed to snag 21st place (if not wholly surprised). It was a stronger start than I could have hoped for while still giving me lots of room to grow and improve in the future.
I will say I was disappointed to receive some 1/10 scores for my game. I think it’s inevitable that a story is not going to resonate with everyone, but it feels like ratings that low fail to engage with or respect even the effort and polish that goes into making IF games, and I was surprised to see other games I really enjoyed hit by a couple of seemingly errant 1/10 scores too. A reassuring takeaway for me is that those scores are likely not coming from authors or active members of this community. Like I said above I have seen nothing but respect for the art and process of interactive fiction in these forums.
Conclusion:
In some ways it feels strange to stand among other games that had very clear messages and meaningful things to say. A Rock’s Tale is more of a loose, pleasant experience with little messages to be gathered here and there at each player’s discretion. That being said, for me A Rock’s Tale is an extremely meaningful piece of writing. To see people engage with it and take from it what they will was an unexpectedly rewarding experience. While A Rock’s Tale may not stick with everyone who played it or reviewed it, I just want to wrap up this post mortem by saying that your thoughts, feelings and feedback will absolutely stick with me, and I value them all immensely. Thank you all!
which software did you use to design the passage structure?