I’m going to split up my postmortems into separate threads this year, partly because my batch of entries this year was more uniformly substantial than usual, and partly because I’m not sure I’d be able to get one whopping big one out in a reasonable time. I’m starting with the smallest: The Golden King:
59th place wasn’t a great result here. However, there are a couple of big things I take away from this:
- This was probably not a good fit for IFComp specifically. Early reviews raised the point that this is “annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories”, while The Golden King features no text beyond the title. Being in kind of a rush this year, I overlooked this detail. While I think there’s a case to be made that the audio is essentially filling the same role as text, the game also relies heavily on graphics and involves controlling a character’s movement directly with the arrow keys, and in combining all of these elements the game strays a little far from what’s generally accepted as interactive fiction. I don’t want to make a habit of entering things that later make me feel obliged to say “I promise I won’t do this again,” but…yeah. I promise I won’t do this again.
- Everyone writing reviews and feedback was super nice regardless. I’ve said before that one of the great things about IFComp is that judges are willing to engage with even very unusual entries, and that’s exactly what happened here. It was great to see people trying to interpret this as an allegory for something specific: President Trump and AI were both suggested, and both feel like a good fit. I’m glad that people enjoyed this experiment even if the spread of judges’ scores suggest a very mixed opinion.
In terms of the story, I didn’t actually intend to comment on any specific real-world person or thing. (Also, it’s based on a flash fiction piece I wrote back in 2015 so predates the two interpretations suggested in reviews.) I see the message as being a broader one about the danger of trusting people to recognise their own mistakes: good people might; bad people don’t.
In terms of the game, I feel as though there was room for a little extra polish but at the same time that this was probably at the limits of what I could do with 3D assets and a greater-than-usual reliance on audio. All the assets (with the exception of the “gods”) were made using Kenney’s Asset Forge Deluxe, and there were at least two versions of everything but the king (who never turns to gold) and the gods (who never appear any other way). I couldn’t find any way of changing the material of these 3D objects, so they’re actually deleted and replaced with gold equivalents in the same location/orientation as the king approaches.
Though I’ll admit the game’s rather linear, it will actually do a fair bit to accommodate any possible sequence of actions: story lines can be triggered in different orders, and if you’re really racing through then it’ll hold off on the next until the current one is finished. I’m aware that (very annoyingly!) the ending was cut off on some devices despite this and I’m completely at a loss as to why: I tested it thoroughly before submitting!
The environment ended up being rather complicated. Rejecting key presses that would put the king inside a wall or table proved less practical than making him follow an invisible, flying cube that navigates a parallel version of the level hovering just overhead. If a move places that cube inside a wall, it teleports back over the king’s location and he stays put. It was important to me that each move required a separate key press, making it an intentional choice (and more like a turn in a chess game). I don’t think it would have the same weight if you could zip straight across the floor and turn a bunch of things to gold by accident.
Though I’ve promised not to do this again, I may well borrow elements from it in future. I think there is room in IFComp for entries with a more videogame-y style of movement (though I’m thinking of more of a Bitsy-type setup here). I’m also finding that 3D graphics open up some interesting options: I can see myself using those for visual novel backgrounds at some point. Finally, I probably will do more with sound in future though if it’s delivering story text then I will provide subtitles. That was something I really would have liked to include here, even, but given the apparent trouble with lines overlapping or failing to play I don’t think it was practical for this specific title at this point in time.
The one other thing to mention here is that it was quite a surprise to see The Flourishing entered into the same comp! I’m afraid I only saw the opening snippet in Milo’s stream, but it really feels as though it opts for the same sort of highly visual 3D setup in a way that strikes me as probably a better fit for IFComp. I didn’t like to spend time during the judging period trying to run a .exe on my Linux machine (even if it’s not usually an issue) but I would like to give it a proper try for myself at some point down the line. If I do ever enter something that builds upon The Golden King, it’ll likely take some inspiration from that.
). Also I wanted to mention I did really like your use of sound effects in this.Things like the garden going silent was nice touch and effective.