Many thanks to everyone who played, tested, judged, rated, and/or reviewed one or more of my IFComp entries this year: Fantasy Opera: Mischief at the Masquerade, The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens, and The Path of Totality! And thanks to all my fellow authors. I’ve been blown away by this community’s passion and commitment when it comes to authoring, playing, reviewing, and discussing games.
As a first-time participant and a first-time IF author, I really didn’t know what to expect. Submitting three substantial games in one year made for a very intense experience! But I am grateful that I had the time and energy to pull it off and that the community was generously willing to engage with this quantity of content from a previously unknown author. For all three games to have placed in the top 20, and for two to have made it into the top 10… well, those placements were beyond my wildest dreams.
These games are very much a set, I feel, so I’ve written a single postmortem covering all three of them. As a result, this essay is extremely long! I assume that most folks will not want to read through this. But for anyone who wants to dig in, well… here you go!
Contents:
- Background
- Creative Goals
- Technical Highlights
a. Hundreds of endings in The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens
b. Combining deduction with skill checks in Fantasy Opera
c. Rotating pronouns in The Path of Totality - Player Analytics
- Takeaways
- What’s Next?
1. Background
It was my concept for The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens that drove me to learn the ink scripting language and to start writing my first IF game in earnest earlier this year, without any definite sense of where it might take me or, frankly, whether I would ever be willing to show it to anyone — never mind enter it into a competition! I had nearly completed the first draft of that game before I started seriously considering IFComp as a possible venue for my work.
As I developed that project further and the concepts for the next two games emerged, I decided to take the leap. The primary audience I had in mind were fans of CRPGs and games oriented around NPC relationships, but I was unsure of how the IFComp community as a whole might receive my projects. It certainly has been gratifying to find that my games received a positive reception from the majority of the folks who engaged with them — from playtesting up to the competition results.
I came to these projects with a professional background in music composition and writing text for music and stage, as well as experience in visual art, UX design, and web design. But writing these three games was a self-made crash course in game design, writing long-form fiction (and the fantasy, romance, and mystery genres in particular), and coding with ink, all for the first time. It’s been an exhilarating creative challenge, and one that I’ve treasured.
At the risk of tooting my own horn (or cornetto!), here are some numbers to quantify the work that was produced: I wrote ~181,500 words, made 37 watercolor paintings and pastel drawings, and composed nine pieces of music (for Sylvan) for these games. They were developed through a total of 18 playtests with 11 generous testers, which totaled approximately 48 testing-hours (not including my own testing). Combined, these three games represent (on average) around 5 - 6 1/2 hours of gameplay.
On that note, a special thanks to all my testers: Arthurianmaiden, Burt, Crypt-glitch, Deborah, @BitterlyIndifferent, @max_lich, oryndoll, Amanda Offord, @jeresig, @John_Ayliff, and Una!
2. Creative Goals
All three of these games were the result of my attempts to synthesize some diverse influences and interests, and to fulfill a set of creative prompts I chose for myself.
What if I placed elements of the character-driven adventure stories, roleplaying, and romance that I’ve enjoyed in high fantasy CRPGs (Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin II) into a down-to-earth, cozy fantasy setting (a la “Legends & Lattes,” a novel about a retired orc adventurer who opens a coffee shop)? I haven’t been too interested in writing the violence typical of high fantasy, but I love the genre’s imaginative possibilities. And at this stage of life, I don’t particularly connect with coming-of-age stories; yet I’ve always loved the themes of discovery, adventure, and wonder that are hallmarks of children’s & YA fantasy literature. As an author, could I make the fantasy genre “work” better for me — and by extension, players like me?
What if, in the process, I drew on various interests I’ve collected over the years (garden design, landscape ecology, walking narratives, art history, music history, etc) and infused my fantasy settings with an unapologetically idiosyncratic and playful collage of elements? (For anyone who’s interested, I go into detail about my historical references in these behind-the-game docs: Fantasy Opera, The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens, The Path of Totality.)
My sensibility for these projects somewhat took after the so-called ‘messy’ worldbuilding (minus the biblical parallels) of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia: my ‘lamp post’ namesake. This can be seen in the dream-like hybrid of Medici Renaissance gardens and Greek myth with DnD/Tolkien-esque fantasy in Sylvan Gardens; the Canterbury Tales-style pilgrimage populated by folkloric pixies in The Path of Totality; or the historically-informed Baroque period orchestra populated by elves and tieflings in Fantasy Opera. Cultivating a sense of atmosphere that would immerse players in the story, with room for both the mythic and the humorous, was my primary goal.
What if puzzles and game mechanics were incorporated into the narrative structure of these story-focused games in the way that, say, a major aria punctuates an opera? E.g., the line-drawing puzzle in Sylvan Gardens; retrieving companions from the pixie mist in The Path of Totality; or picking thieves out of the theater crowd in Fantasy Opera.
And what if, within this space of “make-believe,” I could give expression to what’s rolling around in my mind and in my personal life? I’m not drawn to writing explicitly autobiographical work and I’m generally a very private person, but any story I write with care and devotion is going to be a reflection of my inner world — as well as what I want to express about the human condition and social issues. Fantastical though these stories may be, I put a great deal of heart, soul, thought, and personal experience into them.
Whether this stew of ingredients was successfully reconciled and expressed in these three games depends of course on each player’s experience and the lens they bring to my stories.
3. Technical Highlights
To limit the length of this already very long essay, I’ll highlight just one technical challenge that I found engaging to work on in each of my three games.
a. Hundreds of endings in The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens
I calculated that there are over 260 unique variations on the ending of this game. Between the different outcomes for the PC’s relationships with NPCs and the major endgame decisions the player must make, the future for the PC and NPCs alike includes many permutations.
Achieving continuity and cohesion for Sylvan’s ending was mainly a task of figuring out which story events needed to be interdependent and, in those cases, accounting for ripple effects between choices and outcomes; then expressing that through both prose and code.
Here are summaries of just a couple different endings you could end up with (MAJOR SPOILERS!):
Scenario 1: The PC decides to plant the dryads’ tree seeds, thereby facilitating the rebirth of the dryads but bringing about the end of the village of Sylvandale. The PC had romanced Felix, and built enough trust with him (via the hidden “attitude rating”) that Felix accepts their decision as a necessary sacrifice. The PC urges Rion to study and write about Pecunia’s life work, which leads to renewed acknowledgement of the existence of magic in academic circles. Balanor singlehandedly raises a new generation of dryads. Rion and Penny both leave Sylvandale to take jobs at Wyrmbridge University. The PC marries Felix and moves in with him, his cat, and his parents, all of whom relocate to a nearby village.
Scenario 2: The PC decides not to plant the dryads’ tree seeds, instead preserving Pecunia’s magic and the village of Sylvandale. The PC had romanced Balanor, but failed to build high trust with him; so Balanor breaks up with the PC. The PC further betrays Balanor by choosing to become a wizard. But in the reunion scene, the player surprisingly sets aside their wizardly aspirations to take up the challenge of helping Balanor search the mountains for other surviving dryads. Meanwhile, the others stay in Sylvandale. Rion publishes on the mythology of the constellations, Penny publishes her botanical illustrations, and Felix marries a fishmonger.
b. Combining deduction with skill checks in Fantasy Opera
Introducing RPG-style randomized dice rolls and skill checks, with the ability to customize the PC’s stats, added quite a few layers of complexity to the design of this game. In this mystery game that hinges on clues and deduction, I wanted to make sure that bad luck would never ruin the fun. Chief among my concerns was ensuring that each player would be able to surface every clue that is critical to solving the core mystery of the game: no matter which build the player chose, or how many nat ones they roll.
(Light spoilers ahead!)
First, I had to plan multiple pathways to uncovering load-bearing clues. Then I had to give the player an opportunity to find these clues with skill checks (some passive, mostly active) that would be impossible to fail with their build. For example: if the player adds a 3 from their “Observe” skill, they are guaranteed to pass an Observe check with a difficulty of 4 (in this system, there are no critical failures). But if they roll low and only add 1 or 2 from their “Observe,” there will be an opportunity elsewhere in the game to reveal the relevant information with a different approach that favorites the “Charm” or “Maneuver” skills.
Additionally, to avoid soft-locks I had to design the player’s pathway through the game so they would be gently railroaded into making these unmissable skill checks whenever they appear. (E.g., you can’t leave the conversation with X character until you try asking them about Y.)
I confess that there’s one key clue in the game that you can possibly miss through a series of unlucky rolls and/or by skipping past dialogues. To cover that unlikely exception, I indulged in a ‘deus ex machina’ moment with the florist — which, I hope, has enough inherent humor to earn the player’s forgiveness.
c. Rotating pronouns in The Path of Totality
I believe this game may be among the very first to support rotating/rolling personal pronouns for the PC. (I’m not aware of any existing examples but if anyone does, let me know.)
In this game that features trans and nonbinary characters, it was important to me to offer an affirming experience for players who wish to roleplay their real-life gender. To do this, I wanted to go beyond the options of he, she, or they, and allow the player to fully customize neopronouns or choose rolling pronouns.
For rolling pronouns, I offer four presets (she/they, he/they, she/he, and they/she/he). In practice the NPCs will rotate* between each set of pronouns when referring to the PC, resulting in passages like the following (for he/they):
Treeve walks over to add a few more plates to the pile. “Hedrik, are you pestering our poor guest while they’re just trying to help with the dishes? Sticking your nose into their love life, perhaps?” He teases his partner.
“Come now, Treeve. Rory doesn’t seem too bothered by my chatter. I don’t think he minds. Or do you?” Hedrik adds, turning back to you with slight concern.
On the coding side, the solution I devised was to set boolean variables that determine 1) whether the player chose multiple pronouns; 2) which combination of pronouns they chose; and 3) which pronoun set is actively being used. At each point in the text where I want the NPCs to switch it up, I used conditionals to divert to nested “tunnels” inside the ink script that will rotate to the next set (e.g.: if the player has chosen he/they and they/them is currently being used, then switch to he/him; else, switch to they/them).
* Not every person with rolling pronouns wishes for them to be rotated in this manner. The game makes usage explicitly clear before the player commits to selecting this option.
4. Player Analytics
In lieu of a handy parser transcript, my games are set up with analytics (thanks to @jeresig!) to anonymously track story events inside each of my games. This allowed me to pull together some fun numbers and learn more about what choices players made, from stats to romances. This data reflects a subset of players who:
- Played the games on my website (and not itch.io).
- Completed a playthrough from Sep 1 - Oct 18, 2025.
A couple things to note: the data likely includes players who didn’t judge in IFComp, but may have found my games through itch.io or Tumblr. Also, people definitely replayed or save scummed a bit to see different outcomes; in those instances, players will have had all their choices counted, which may skew the results a bit.
Fantasy Opera: Mischief at the Masquerade
-
Stats: Private investigators chose to prioritize skills of observation above all others, selecting “Observe” as their top skill a whopping 73% of the time! “Music” was the favored area of expert knowledge, followed very closely by “Theater” and “Society.”
-
Hints: Half of players requested a hint to point them in the direction of the robbery’s target (uncertainty around this point came up in feedback, and the data confirms it), while 23% of players cast a magic spell to reveal the full solution to the mystery.
-
Romances: 80% of players went on a date with a member of the Teatro della Fantasia. Most of the characters were neck-in-neck for popularity, but poor Leo and Claudio trailed behind.
-
Achievements: Half of players managed to successfully eavesdrop at Angelo’s dressing room, but only one person (!) played the crumhorn at Canaletto’s Cornettos.
The Path of Totality
-
Background: Astronomer was the most popular background (why am I not surprised, my fellow nerds?). Players chose this option 48% of the time, with Adventurer and Pilgrim neck-in-neck for second choice.
-
Romance: 67% of players found romance on the Loor Way. Tula was by far the most popular romance option, accounting for 45% of all romances, with the remaining characters in a near-even split.
-
Achievements: 88% of players retrieved all four companions from inside the pixy mist (“Demystified”), while only three intrepid players got the “Self-Sufficient” achievement, which requires camping alone on your first night with the Adventurer background.
The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens
-
Endgame decision: Players chose to replant the dryads’ trees a dominant 86% of the time, with every player trying this path at least once. Of those instances, the more moderate approach (advocated by Penny) was selected 68% of the time. There was one singular instance of a player choosing to protect the village of Sylvandale, with the remainder opting to study Pecunia’s private library before deciding.
-
Relationships: Every single player went on a “date” (friendly or romantic) with all four NPCs. 88% of players found romance in the gardens and (to my delight!) the NPCs were very nearly equal in popularity, with Penny and Balanor in a tie for the lead.
-
Achievements: 75% of players dedicated themselves to searching for the remaining dryads, 50% of players tried to open the Wunderkammer by force, and 17% of players chose to become wizards. Just one player chose to let Pecunia’s private library fade into obscurity.
(Again, all this includes save-scums, so some players may have tried multiple choices!)
5. Takeaways
I started drafting an even longer version of this postmortem, in which I started to summarize the range of feedback my games have received. But I realized that this process was mainly helpful to me, rather than something I wanted to attempt to articulate comprehensively for general consumption.
Instead, I thought it might be more interesting for folks to read how I’m considering refining my approach to future projects in response to the feedback (which includes both private comments and public reviews.)
One thing I’ve noticed is that players’ reactions and opinions will often directly conflict with each other. A player will cite a certain feature as a highlight, or their favorite part of the game; another will point to that same element as a weak point of the game. The same puzzle may be too easy, just right, or too difficult, depending on who you ask. A narrative theme or tonal choice might resonate strongly with one player, whereas another player might dislike it or just overlook it entirely. Naturally, we all have different preferences and tastes — and it’s clear to me that you can’t please everyone!
Still, I’ve certainly taken in everyone’s feedback and will keep it all in mind moving forward. But I’ve been most interested in closely examining and considering applications for the critiques (and praise) that were 1) shared by quite a few people (i.e. there was some degree of consensus) and/or 2) particularly relevant to my creative goals.
Here are a few things I’m thinking about as I conceive of future projects (and possibly post-comp releases of my prior games). I hope it will be understood that these are not firm commitments, but merely ideas bouncing around my mind at the moment.
1. Explore breaking out of an attitude rating-based system, or adjust how that system is implemented, for NPC relationships.
Following the model of other romance/friendship games, my NPC relationships were built on a foundation of “attitude” ratings (hidden in Sylvan and Totality, visible in Fantasy Opera) that rise or fall through the player’s story choices and dialogues. These ratings then serve as a threshold for advancing friendship or romance storylines.
The primary challenge in this area, I feel, is to strike a balance between narrative realism and clear gameplay. For these past games, at times I erred on the side of clarity because I understand that it’s important to many players to have a very clear path to curating their relationships (especially for folks who have their heart set on a certain romance).
For future relationship-driven games, I have ideas about crafting alternative approaches or adjustments to how I go about tracking the PC’s relationships with NPCs. This may involving weighting attitude points much more heavily towards story choices, and shifting them away from dialogues. This would ideally free me up to write dialogues that revolve solely (or primarily) around expressive roleplaying with naturalistic-feeling conversation, rather than the mechanics of gaining and losing points.
2. Explore making preset PCs alongside fully customizable options, and try writing games where the PC is a non-factor.
In the context of the player character-driven games I’ve written, I’ve observed two “player profiles” (very broadly speaking). The first player prefers a PC whose identity, backstory, and personality is substantially up to players themselves to imagine in an act of collaborative storytelling with the game; a “headcanon,” essentially. The second player prefers a PC whose identity, backstory, and personality is clearly defined and supported by the game’s text. (Others, of course, may be open to either approach.)
I’d generally consider myself to be the first type (in the “prefer to fill the blanks in with my imagination” camp), so I naturally gravitated towards serving that audience. Especially in my relationship-driven games, Sylvan and Totality.
For future projects, I’m curious about supporting both types of experiences by offering one or more preset PCs alongside a fully customizable option. Including both would be more labor-intensive to write, certainly, but it may be feasible if I place reasonable limitations on scope.
I’m also interested in writing narrative frames in which the PC is largely a non-factor, but the player is instead invited to manipulate elements of the story from a (more or less) third-person perspective.
3. Consider a more all-or-nothing approach to romance.
All three of my games include NPC romances, but it was important to me from the start that these stories would feel cohesive and complete for players who opt not to pursue a romance (and that romance storylines would never be forced upon the player). As far as I can tell, this goal was successfully managed in Sylvan and Totality.
Fantasy Opera was conceived of essentially as a mystery RPG with a dash of romance as an optional endgame bonus; a “value add” for folks who’d enjoy that. I didn’t incorporate the romances into the main story arc of the game because it wasn’t natural to the shape of it — it seemed a strange line to cross to have a P.I. flirt with potential suspects during an active investigation, after all. Feedback on this approach was mixed. Some enjoyed it, but many found that it threw off the story’s balance.
While I still want my future relationship-driven games to be accessible to a non-romance-oriented audience, moving forward I may take more of an all-or-nothing approach when it comes to the inclusion of romance in a given project. For games where the romance will not feature prominently, perhaps less is more and none is better.
4. Try making more puzzley games for players who like puzzles.
Puzzles were not a primary focus of these games, but rather served as a way to deepen the player’s engagement with the story. (With the exception of Fantasy Opera, if you consider the mystery to be a puzzle in itself.) But having now written games that are relatively lighter on the puzzle side — and seeing how highly engaged people are with puzzles, in general — I’m feeling energized and curious to take a crack at making games that revolve more substantially around puzzles. In addition to continue developing more puzzle-light games.
5. Explore new genres/tones, while continuing to write cozy fantasy.
I described all three of my games as “cozy fantasy,” and they were created against the backdrop of contemporary cozy fantasy fiction. While knowledge of specific books is certainly not required to enjoy my games, I have gotten the sense that players’ interpretations of my work may be colored or informed by the degree to which they have a taste for this particular genre.
I also have the impression that situating my stories within a “cozy” atmosphere may have led some folks to overlook (or even by surprised by) the more complex social, emotional, and intellectual themes layered into my work.
I’m interested in continuing to write cozy fantasy. For those projects, I’m going to give further consideration to where folks’ expectations are when it comes to coziness and potentially refine how I purposefully choose to feed into, or subvert, those expectations.
I’m also interested in trying other genres or narrative tones, and discovering whether parts of my authorial voice will come through differently for the audience in those contexts.
6. What’s Next?
I’ve recently started a series of short, experimental games I’m calling “Lightbulb Moments.” These projects are places where I’m trying out different game mechanics and narrative frames on a small scale. These include It Was Fate, a recent submission to inkJAM; and Beneath the Weeping Willow, an upcoming entry to Ectocomp.
In the meantime, @jeresig has been working with me to build the Lamp Post Ink Player: a custom web app for powering ink stories. John is rewriting the custom web app that I had designed for my IFComp games from the ground up, with an eye towards making a more robust platform for long-term development that will be available to all ink authors as an open source project.
The app is still in early development, but John already has all of the core features in place! These include two upgrades we’re particularly happy about. First, games powered by this app will be playable offline (my games in this IFComp required a web server to run and, as such, were not downloadable). Players will also be able to download their saves as JSON files in case of unreliable local browser storage, e.g. when playing inside the itch.io iframe on certain browsers.
Aside from a few minor bug fixes, I’m not planning substantial post-comp releases in the immediate future. For the long-term, I’m considering remastering my games from this year’s IFComp in the new ink player platform and making a few meaningful refinements or additions during that process.
Finally, I have ideas for two larger games in early development. These include an all-new concept and a sequel to Fantasy Opera. If I make good progress, I’m hoping to enter one of these into Spring Thing and develop the other for next year’s IFComp!
To anyone who made it through this mega-postmortem: thank you so much for your interest in my work!