The basics of this idea have been in my head for years now. It began with me being disappointed with the Character of Lucy in the show Fairy Tail (a spirit summoner whose character seemed much flatter than those around her) and getting ideas as to what I would do with her character instead. This then morphed to the point where the only recognizable piece of the original idea was ‘a spirit summoner joining a magic guild’. This combined with a more recent idea inspired by my desire to talk as different characters in Baldur’s Gate 3. I knew that a Paladin had extra dialogue for a conversation I was in, but couldn’t say it because I wasn’t currently playing as them, even though they were standing right next to me. That gave me the idea for a game where the player plays as a group of people, rather than an individual. The hope for this system would that it would allow for just as much player choice as other games, while allowing each PC to have a consistent voice, personality, and opinions, rather than one that oscillates based on player choice.
I also recently had the idea of a world with a government system close to that of early America, wherein only land owning White males were able to vote, as I haven’t seen that explored anywhere else. While I have put in far more effort into the worldbuilding of this setting, most of it could not be explored in this first outing, which I am hoping to remedy in future chapters.
This project was incredibly hard to write. I would get a few sentences into it, then realize I had to decide what the city looked like, which sent me down another rabbit hole of how the city was built in the first place. This was also the first time I had to write something on a timeline not my own, (at least one that I wasn’t already outpacing like in my creative writing classes) so I had to start getting words down well before I had a full world or characters in mind. Normally, I have a world and at least the outlines of characters before I ever start writing.
Another challenge was the narrator. I originally wanted to write it in first person, and figuring out a voice for him was incredibly hard, as making a first person view with an interactive story was something I had never done before, and wasn’t something I was looking forward to. Making it in second person would mean I would want to make a objective narrator, which I’m not that good at. Eventually, I had the idea for one of the spirits to be the narrator, and that immediately made everything so much easier. Now the narrator could be a fun part of the narrative, rather than a simple means to an end.
This has also been only my second outing when it comes to interactive fiction, and I believe I have taken another good step towards finding where I like the balance between player choice and how much I can actually write. The fight scene at the end was a test run for what I am going for, with short scenes with tons of variations, and those choices being logged by the game as integers. So that while there can be up to hundreds of ways a scene can go, all the game has to remember (and therefore me) is things like, how well the player did on a scale of 1-5, did this person get hurt, did this person approve of what you did. This way, each of those each individual outcomes can have consequences without putting a massive strain on me to write more of these consequences, taking time away from writing more content for the story.
Another thing this does, is it makes each choice have limited ripple effects. Let me explain: while it is obviously good to allow the player to change the story, or you don’t want to go too far. Mass Effect I feel does a good job of this, where it feels like your choices matter, but you are not missing out on content because of said choice. In a game like Fire Emblem Fates, your choice at the beginning has massive consequence. So massive in fact that making each choice makes you play an entirely different game. This makes the choice you make practically meaningless, because you aren’t really making a choice. You play through one choice in one game, then go back and make the other choice to play the other.
Another thing I learned through editing this is how I prefer to edit. Going back and editing this first chapter until it’s perfect is not how I like to edit, apparently. I much prefer continuing on with the story so I can learn more about the world and its characters. That way, I can come back later with far more knowledge of how a character is supposed to sound, now that I’ve written them for much longer. As well, I also learn more about the world in the same way.
Despite this game and this world being quite unfinished by the time it was released, I am glad at the reception it got. I always love getting feedback on my work, regardless of how much people like it. (Though people liking it is certainly preferable, emotionally speaking.) So thanks to everyone who took a look at it and gave me their thoughts, especially my beta readers, Mildred, Erika, Allyson, and the person who made one of the funniest reviews of any game I’ve seen, Mike Russo.