3 | LPM | AT THE STRIKE OF TWELVE
3 | LPM | AT THE STRIKE OF TWELVE
by: One Boat Crew (Raiden)
Progress:
- I reached the main good ending in around 5 minutes, and spent a few more minutes checking the alternate branches.
Engagement with Horror Genre:
- This piece is a mix of different horror elements—psychological horror, the haunting at the grave site, and crime thriller. The narrative weaves these elements together, with the spatial anchor of the grave site to start and end the piece.
Things I Appreciated:
-
What I enjoyed the most about this piece is the focus on sound details. The bell motif carries through the whole piece, which helps the piece feel cohesive even as different surreal things happen over the course of the narrative. That’s not the only sound, either (for instance, the clomping of steps, rain in the protagonist’s ear).
-
Another element I liked was the horror element of being in the wrong body, with emphasis placed on the calloused hands that recur through a few different scenes. Having those details carry through across scenes helps them stick in the reader’s mind.
-
I especially liked the description of the monster in the bad ending, there were some good details that I thought worked really well together to build an image for the reader.
Miscellaneous Comments/Recommendations:
-
In terms of presentation style, one minor note that I think is relatively easy to implement that would make this look visually cleaner, is putting an empty space/line between paragraphs. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but I personally find that if you aren’t indenting paragraphs, adding this extra line break really helps direct my eye to each sentence/paragraph, and improves how efficiently I am able to absorb the information. It seems to just make things look cleaner and more focused.
-
Something I observed in this piece is that, when presented with two choices, the top/first option is always the “correct” one (to advance to the main good ending). I think it’s a good strategy to, even if you structure it that way originally while drafting to help stay organized, go through and mix it up so that the reader doesn’t start to recognize the pattern as to what they should select.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
- I think this is the first time in a piece that I noticed how much the presentation order of the choices can matter. While I have discussed in the past how choices can be given more weight when both options seem similarly plausible (or similarly unappealing), I haven’t thought much about the psychology of how the reader’s bias might play out to select the first vs. the second choice. I think in choice based narratives, there must be a slight bias toward picking the top choice (especially when the reader is expecting to go back and try again to find other branches of the narratives), so taking that into consideration (which choice you are deciding to privilege with the first position and why) is something that I think I want to be conscious of in my own work.
Memorable Moment:
- I leaned forward the most when the protagonist character woke up in the detective’s body for the first time. That’s the part that drew me the most into the narrative and made me curious as to where it would go next!