14 | LGG | HOTEL HALLOWEEN
14 | LGG | HOTEL HALLOWEEN
by: One Boat Crew
This is (as detailed by the blurb) an anthology of games made by creative writing students in 2 hours or less, so I had to throw my standard response format into the trash, where it undoubtedly belongs.
Instead, I decided to just give an overall impression of each of the micro-games and an overall reflection at the end.
Room 10, by Smurfs
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Progress: I played through all the endings in about 1m15s
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This seemed to be an exploration of branching narratives, choose-your-own-adventure style, with one good ending and several dead-end/bad endings. I was most amused by the choice to do nothing, or complaining to the manager about the POOL OF BLOOD, being punished.
Room 16, by Big Pig
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Progress: I reached the “to be continued” screen in about 1m02s
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Once again, I was punished for doing nothing! I guess I need to learn to be less lazy here.
This game is building toward a progressive format in terms of having the player returning to the same room each year with skill upgrades, so presumably if given more than 2 hours to work on this, the encounters in the room would build on themselves over time.
Room 102, by The Pumkins
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Progress: I reached the good ending in about 1m45s
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This time, I resisted the temptation to select the obviously bad “give up and die” option and actually made it through. I liked the attention to detail in the opening scene, to establish the uncanniness of the setting (odd photographs, being assigned a room on the “negative fifth floor.’)
Room 113, by Enterci
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Progress: I searched through most, if not all of the branches, in about 2 minutes.
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Something I really liked was getting to play as a specific type of character—a werewolf—and that was referenced again later. Building consistency of character is important! I also liked that the choices weren’t always “obviously good” vs. “obviously bad”, so there is some tension in making choices without a clear correct answer. On the other hand, that can also make it feel a bit arbitrary when doing something that seems reasonable enough works out so terribly!
Room 444, by Four Dolls
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Progress: I read through the branches in about 1m38s
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I thought the horror element was well developed here—enough time is spent on developing the backstory for the dolls, and then if you make bad choices, you may join their uncanny ranks. I liked the sense of progression here as a result, with the dolls overwhelming the scene as the game moves forward.
Room 505, by Storyteller
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Progress: I reached a good ending in around 2 minutes, and spend another minute or two trying to figure out what to enter into the text box for the right hand (I guessed things like, “purgatory,” “arena,” “orlando,” and “room 505,” which all gave an error message.)
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I really liked the text box popup, even if I wasn’t able to solve it. It was an engaging idea for a puzzle and I liked the format change. I also thought some of the death screens were pretty funny, like, congratulations, you became a great Halloween decoration!
Room 555, by Tach
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Progress: I reached the end and looked at a few branches in about 1m10s
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I thought the use of the soda bottle was creative. I laughed at first at it being described as an “epic weapon” against dark forces, so seeing it being used to plug the hole in the ventilation unit was amusing. In general, thinking of creative ways of using otherwise ordinary objects can be a good approach to designing puzzles in choice-based narratives.
Room 666, by Yuyu & Mimi
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Progress: I reached many bad endings in a total of 2m09s.
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I really liked the concept of the haunted mirror, it’s a horror trope but an effective one. There was also a motif of losing eyes across a couple of the different endings, so I liked the consistency of that. In a true horror fashion, I guess it’s fitting that all the endings here appeared to be bad ones.
Overall thoughts:
- This was cool! I’m glad everyone who contributed got a chance to test out building a narrative in Twine with a time limit, it’s a good practice to write something with constraints/a deadline because it forces you to focus and get something done rather than just endlessly drafting or getting stuck on a blank page. Despite the unifying hotel theme, each of these pieces felt distinctive and took that theme in a different direction. The main, overarching advice I would give, for future work in building choice-based narratives, is to be thoughtful about what type of choices to present. For instance, sometimes choices here were arbitrary: pick between two different colors, with no real hint to the correct answer. It’s not always the most satisfying to have your fate determined by luck alone. (The humor and ability to undo/redo does lessen the blow of course!) Other times, there were choices where one choice is obviously good and one is obviously bad choice, so there wasn’t much tension in the choice when only one option is appealing. While different situations call for different types of choices, I think something to keep in mind is to provide a choice where multiple options are plausible things that someone might want to do (for instance: should you stay and fight? or run/escape?) or are attached to different emotions. If there’s only one obvious/reasonable course of action, should it even be a choice? You, as the author, get to choose where those decision points are, so it’s helpful to reflect on times that you had to make challenging decisions and think about how to evoke that type of feeling in the reader.