The original concept for this bears almost no resemblance to its final form. I watch a lot of indie horror letsplays, and a common trope in that genre is exploration of some secluded and dangerous area with lore delivered via notes the player character finds. The first germ of an idea was to follow the journey of the note-writer more directly, with some player agency on what featured in the messages they left behind, then retrace a changed version of the initial path with a new character who uses those messages to help them progress through the puzzles around them. A sort of temporally-split choice and puzzle game. The only aspects of this idea which survived into Saltcast were the cave system setting and the pov change in the third actāalthough the significance of the latter is again totally different. But it got me started thinking about the world, and the creation myth and magic system gradually materialised, and that got me the beginnings of a plot.
The other plan, once I decided I was actually going for this, was to write something longer than I was used to. Iāve spent the last few years writing short stories. I wanted to build up the stamina to go for a novel. I figured a fairly basic fantasy concept would be fun and would help me avoid getting lost in intricacies of plot, and that the conventional branching paths of IF would allow me to mess about with interesting possibilities while still focusing on a limited number of story beats. It grew a lot in the tellingāI exceeded my planned word-count by about 20K. I think it mostly justifies its length, though itās definitely more for people who donāt mind something a little ponderous.
Points of tension:
āI struggled a lot with balancing player agency with pacing. I ended up cutting a couple of encounters I was fond of and which provided choice-beats in the narrative because they just made progression feel too slow. There are still fewer meaningful choices than Iād like. Some of the one-click deaths are there just because it felt like there needed to be player engagement at that point, but narratively I could only think of one or two ways to succeedāat least without committing to a huge branch in the path which might never rejoin the main flow. It feels a bit like cheating to have them, so Iām not satisfied with that solution, but I still havenāt really thought of a better one.
āThere were supposed to be puzzles! The second act was supposed to be a gauntlet of puzzle-death-traps you had to pass to get to your goal. When it came to actually writing it, though, I couldnāt internally justify why the villain would have left tricky ways of deactivating his protections. Giving up on that, I tried to instead add mini-games based around dodging through the traps, little things where you had to click the correct tile out of a line-up within three seconds, and so on. Here I discovered that coding makes me cry. I was still trying to get them to work a couple days before the deadline, but they went on being buggy nightmares and, much more damningly, were simply not fun to play. I decided getting rid of them was the right call, and Iām very glad I did, though I lost a lot of the functionality of the āwoundsā tracked state with themāthis would be the main place that stat would come have into play. At the moment, having really high wounds in the first two arcs should block you out of one choice required to have the perfect ending, but the good ending isnāt that different, so it does feel like there arenāt enough consequences for something which features so prominently. (Wounds in the last arc are actually a different stat, and if theyāre high and you get the bad end, they add a scene which softens it a little because the Saltcast are grateful you got hurt helping them out. This is probably also not cued enough.)
āI was maybe more blasĆ© about the third-act pov change than I should have been, even though it mostly worked out! I knew I risked killing momentum with it, but didnāt really dare to hope people would be attached enough to Madelaine that the attachment itself might be a factor. I think I underestimated how much role-playing through a defined characterās choices builds a connection with them. I think I got away with it because I personally did care about the character when writing her, and the third act shows that even though I wasnāt confident Iād carry the audience with me on the emotional line. Iām delighted people did care, and I think itās a key lesson Iāll take with me.
āPassages are really long. I thought Iād get penalised in the scoring a lot more on that than ended up being the case, so Iām grateful youāre all so patient. It was interesting how different the play-times people reported were, presumably just based on reading time.
Despite writing for more than a year with the comp in mind, just before the deadline I was so discouraged with the game that I was seriously considering not entering, mainly because I thought it was so long-winded no-one would want to finish. Iām really, really glad I did. This has been a wonderful experience. I think with future entries Iāll be less worried about the results. Probably nobody is going to chase me out of the community with pitchforks no matter what I produce, and someone out there will enjoy some aspect of it. That said, Iām blown away and honoured to come in the top twenty: it was well beyond my highest ambitions. All the feedback I got was useful, and much of it was delightful. Next year I hope to participate more myself in judging and reviewing.
Final noteāI did notice that I was towards the bottom end for number of ratings. Thereās no real way to know why that isālength, genre, something in the blurb, something in the cover art? But I do wonder, and please feel free to share any speculation you have on that score. I kind of wonder if it was an advantage: if I just happened to luck into the people who liked the game and never hit the radar of people who wouldnāt have. That said, obviously the people who appreciated my masterpiece have immaculate judgement and were entirely correct on the merits, so it all worked out!
) I much prefer longer works because it feels more worth my time to get invested in that world.