Oh, the French! my first narrative game, and it’s inspired by absurdist fiction. You can play it in the browser on itch, and it (probably) takes less than listening to this podcast to complete one play-through. Please check it out!

I learned many, many big things by making this very, very small game. But why did I pick this project? Interactive fiction games are thing of the past with no audience! There is a thriving community, I’ll have you know. I was simply aiming to make something. I tried to follow the good old advice: finish it!

A twine narrative game seemed like something I would enjoy doing and could actually do, and I wanted to go through the development loop at least once, as fast as I could. So what did I learn in this loop?

* Scope creep is real: many small decisions affected later decisions which allowed me to continuously convince myself that something needed to be added to the game. Could some things have been cut without anyone noticing? Yes! Do I regret adding them? No. But only because it was such a small game that the additional time investment was negligible. However, this is precisely why I wanted to go through the loop once: to see these tendencies and plan against them. Which brings me to:

* Keeping a design document is really valuable: Not everyone agrees, and it probably just depends on your work style, but for me, it really helped streamline the writing decisions for the narrative as well as keep an overview of the whole thing. For next time, I’ll also have a mood board or something to create an even stronger direction.

* The GOAT was actually keeping a development diary because I had a huuuge break during development. This helped me jump right back into the mindset and decision making that led to what I had at the time. I was able to pick it up like no time had passed.

* Playtesting is crucial (duh), but make it count: I posted it on reddit to get some feedback and iterate as needed. I got really valuable feedback, which made me realize some things I was approaching wrong because I put narrative before fun, which is plain wrong. It needs to be both, of course. I attempted to mend my ways, and you tell me if I succeeded. But the issue with the playtest was that I just asked for feedback. Next time, I’ll come up with 1-3 concrete (and well phrased) questions to get players to pay attention to what I want to know, and get even better feedback.

All in all, I didn’t learn anything I hadn’t known, but experiencing something yourself makes all the difference!

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