This question is geared towards parser games, but could be applied to choice games as well. Let’s say I have a bunch of rooms/locations that could exist as part of a parser game, but no clue what to actually do with them. I have no story at this point. I don’t want to make a pure exploration game, so what I’m looking for are ways someone could theoretically make a game out of these locations, in a way that encourages the player to explore these locations and see them in full.
This is kind of related to the My House/My Apartment phenomenon. If you wanted to make a game out of your house, or school, or favorite park, or workplace, or the nearest town, or the Main Street of your nearest town, how would you do it?
I haven’t actually turned any of the places I know in real life into a set of rooms for a parser game, but I’m wondering, if I theoretically did, what would I be able to do with them? Any ideas for an interesting way to spin it into a workable game concept that has engaging mechanics for the player to motivate them to look around?
I have half-formed notions of turning the location into a survival horror game setting, like in Charm Cochran’s Studio, or doing something fantasy-esque with it, where you have to look for ghosts or something, but that seems like it would place the emphasis on the horror or fantasy aspects and not the locations themselves.
well, i usually start with an idea first. But it’s sometimes the case i like to find away to add in a certain location i like.
But in your case, you have to retro fit an idea. If i had ordinary locations, I’d want an extra-ordinary plot. Like there’s some conspiracy going on or something like “invasion of the body snatchers” maybe. Or aliens?
I’ve thought about supernatural stuff, but I want the emphasis to be on the ordinary locations, and I’m worried that adding in a supernatural component to the plot would make people focus on the aliens or what have you over the locations themselves.
Body snatchers is interesting, because it does require some degree of knowledge about how a person normally acts to detect when they’ve been bodysnatched. Which might work because it would encourage players to learn the ground reality, but I’m not sure about having to implement complex human NPCs. It’s hard to make them believable without giving them an outsized presence in the story.
I wonder if the concept of “searching for mimics” would work when applied to objects, not living things. Mimics are the famous RPG enemy that disguise themselves as objects and then kill you, so maybe a game where you have to look for mimics, or play as a mimic?
I think I’d rather prioritize non-supernatural game ideas for now, though, to fit with a non-supernatural setting. Or make the supernatural aspects tied in deeply to the locations themselves. I’m thinking now about genius loci, and I feel like a game where you could interact with them could still fit what I’m looking for. It’s hard to describe exactly what I’m looking for.
It is fairly hard to design a game around a location unless that location is specifically relevant to the game. I like the body snatchers idea because that requires close attention to your surroundings.
Things people have done with generic houses in the past include:
-You’re in the house, but someone’s coming to get you (like Ian Finley’s All Alone or like the one you mentioned, Charm Cochran’s Studio)
-Objects in the house are slightly off, with more horrifying changes occurring over time (Andrew Plotkin’s Shade)
-Have a house party (like the second part of Ryan Veeder’s Dial C for Cupcakes or the first part of the drug-fueld game Blue Chairs by Chris Klimas)
-Murder mystery game (all 3 of the early Infocom games Deadline, Witness, and Suspect; Jon Ingold’s game Make it Good, and many more)
-Baby sitting (as the baby, like Stephen Granade’s Child’s Play, or as the babysitter, like the german game Allein mit Kai)
-Playing with perspective and euclidean space (like the game Impossible Bottle by Linus Åkesson, or the game Map by Ade McTavish)
If you add workplaces there are tons of game ideas, like stealing, hacking, etc. For cities and towns there are fetch quests, surreal cities, time travel loops, etc.
Edit: And don’t worry if your idea has been done before. Most people have not played most games, so even if you copy an idea from the most popular IF games of all time it will still be new to most people.)
You have to have a story first. The locations are elements of the story. Especially with parser-IF where you have to create the illusion of space and openness. Those things have to be controlled with words and story. When the player reaches a dead end, it can’t be a dead end. The author has to convince the player that they really don’t care about anything “that way” without saying it out loud.
I haven’t released much, but I have half a dozen serious works in progress and they all have one thing in common. They started with a story and a vision and one character. The map and puzzles build themselves through exploring the story as a writer.
Normally I come up with puzzles first and then build the rooms around what those puzzles require, and I think that’s by far the easiest way to do it. But you can also lay out the grid of rooms and then try to come up with puzzles that fit them, ideally ones that depend on the topology of the map; that’s how a decent chunk of Miss Gosling worked.
What if the protagonist is someone whose job is to interact with the locations in some way? An interior decorator, janitor, home inspector, health inspector, etc.
That’s a fun idea! There was one game from a couple decades ago where you were a health inspector (and then it takes a strange twist): Afflicted - Details Only posting it here because I think people might like it.
The reason “my apartment games” get such a bad rep is that they often really are just what you’re describing, just a series of ordinary rooms devoid of any unique characterization of the PC. You probably can go back and discover a reason for being in these rooms, but you might have to rewrite a lot of your original descriptions in response.
Working backwards, what is special about these rooms which defines the owner or inhabitant of this space? what can you add to the rooms that says more about the inhabitants or occupants? What challenges would that character face, and how can you turn that into a story? the inhabitant needn’t even be the owner. Mice, maybe? Or a burglar? Or a neighbor who has stepped in out of concern for the missing owner? But these variant choices of PC would result in differences in how the space is described, which is the problem of space before character design.
But maybe you already had a character in mind when you wrote about the space, and just haven’t realized it yet. Get to know who is describing the space you’ve described.
You might want to check out The Little Four from the last IFComp, which is basically “walk around an apartment examining all of the things there”, but was fairly well received because of how the apartment was used to illustrate the story of its occupants.
Figure out what the player character is doing there in the first place. For that you have to figure out who they are. That’s the kernel of your story; you can work backward and forward from there.
Maybe try taking random pairs of locations as a writing prompt? Even if you didn’t get a whole puzzle out of the exercise right away, you might build up some interesting items and connections between those rooms.
This puts me in mind of Memento (the Chris Nolan movie). Discovering a person through their home and possessions is a common enough detective trope. Discovering yourself through your home and possessions is a little less common. (Also, I imagine the joke of the game being that, at the end, you forget everything you’ve learned, which I find funny.)
Many years ago I had an idea for a parser game that was just two unidentified characters, in bed on a lazy morning, talking; where the only goal of the game was to illuminate the relationship between the two characters; and the relationship was fluidly defined by the conversational choices made by the player; where objects in the room would also be fluid so that they might or might not exist depending on conversational choices, or have varying descriptions, which might in turn open new conversational paths. (Although now that I think about it, I had a conversation about that with Emily one time and then she went off and made Galatea soon after, so I suppose we were thinking along similar lines.)
I’m trying to figure out how I would design a bunch of rooms without any sense of their purpose, which would naturally suggest what type of stories would happen in the setting.
I guess I’m more why is this here? off the bat as opposed to starting with the architecture. I’m sure there are people who doodle backroom maps, or imagine fantasy houses and cities without context.
Actually now that I think about it, doodling in Trizbort is pretty fun.
Several of Ryan Veeder’s games might be good inspiration, as they’re primarily focused on the locations. In The Ascent of the Gothic Tower - Details, the only goal is to reach the top of the titular tower. I don’t think there’s anything that would qualify as a puzzle; it’s basically a walking simulator in parser form. This review does a good job capturing how and why it works as a game.
In An Evening at the Ransom Woodingdean Museum House - Details, you’re a staff member at this house museum, and your goal is to leave for the day. But you can explore the house too if you want. And once you do actually focus on trying to leave, there’s a twist…
Ryan Veeder's Authentic Fly Fishing - Details has lots of small goals and mysteries that you’ll discover as you play. So first you’re just exploring to see what’s there, then your exploring becomes more focused as you encounter small puzzles (getting across a stream, gaining access to a locked building) and little glimpses of backstory about the park that make you want to learn more. And there’s an in-game reward system that incentivizes completion of the goals that arise.
Now I’m just thinking of Cragne Manor, where there’s sort of an overall aim and then the rest seems to me like no clear goal. It’s a little bit of a different story, but you know what I mean.
I have to imagine Cragne Manor would have had a very different reception though if it had been presented as the work of a single author. The “we started from a general premise and then everyone kind of threw in their own thing” is part of the attraction, but a single-author game would have to work hard to justify that level of tonal shift and dubious continuity. (I mean, there’s a reason it includes a “concept warning” as well as a “content warning”, right?)