#Narrative Interaction

[reader-from-nowhere]

Better luck next time!

Death loop au by @keferon :3

[bixels]

Watched a playthrough of Mouthwashing. Adding it to my list of "examples why "walking sims" are actually the best at telling complex and character-focused narratives in video games."

I think the game really justified its genre of gameplay and took advantage in really creative and inspiring ways. Like through the use of interactive metaphor: in a sort of dream sequence, you're told to "take responsibility," but every time you turn around to start walking you're reset. So you have to "take responsibility" by walking backwards and refusing to look where you're going.

I hope this game inspires more writers and devs to look into the walking sim genre and its interactive potential to tell their stories.

[clambuoyance]

“My Phantom Muse” is now available to play!

You can play through the first episode of this interactive game at https://www.glow.art/myphantommuse or download the app and play!

It’s a mystery GL game about a hopeless romantic named Ophelia, who dies on the night she finally plans to confess her feelings to her crush, Rachel! As a ghost, she knows only her love for Rachel and is determined to find a way to catch her attention…Meanwhile, the news of her friend’s death drives the introverted Rachel to drop everything and embark on an investigation to find out what really happened to Ophelia! As she grapples with her own feelings, she begins to believe that she’s most definitely being haunted….

Will the hearts of these two girls finally collide, or are they doomed to forever be worlds apart? Click the link above to play and find out ^_^

I hope you guys enjoy!! Feel free to ask more about it in my inbox!

[blacktabbygames]

hey did you know that slay the princess is out now? did you know it's on sale with a 10% launch discount until november 2nd? do you want to spend several hours getting sternly lectured by and annoying jonathan sims?? well this is your game i think it's good and you should buy it but don't listen to me look at that 91 metascore—and for us, just a couple of lil guys make a game with no gameplay other than click dialogue options! idk must be fun

“An existentially horrific visual novel, with an incredibly well-written plot, a beautiful score and graphics that will enrapture all senses. One of the best narrative games of 2023.” 10/10 – Voxel Smash

“There isn’t a single thing I don’t like about Slay the Princess. The presentation is beautiful, the story is fantastic and moving, the voice acting of amazing characters is done phenomenally well, and the branching paths of the story give you what feels like unlimited possibilities.” 10/10 – Try Hard Guides

“Slay the Princess will stay with you for a long time, I think. It’s absurdist and dark and haunting in a way that not a lot of games are. If you have an itch for something that’s spooky but also morally confronting and you will be thinking about it for days to come, it’s impossible not to recommend this.” A- – Player 2

Anyways more seriously truly from the bottom of our hearts thank you all so much for making this launch a world-shifting experience for us! We can't wait to share more games with you, starting with Episode 5 of Scarlet Hollow 👀

[snakeguy999]

Do u think they play around with their disproportions

[bubbydarkstar]

the guy who did SUBWAY MIDNIGHT (finally) made a new game!

SHOOTY SHOOTY ROBOT INVASION 🤖💢coming JULY 10TH

- 200+ NPCs to have terrible conversations with!

- 50+ robot types to murder!

- 6 wacky levels to explore!

- 1000s of hand-drawn sprites!

WISHLIST NOW, IDIOT!

[gowerhardcastle]

Professor Gower's Games

I’m Gower, and when I’m not being a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature, I’m writing long interactive storygames published by Choice of Games.

Meet some of my characters:

Do you enjoy games where you get involved in terrible scandals, lose your money in ill-conceived wagers, go on foxhunts, solve mysteries and have a torrid affair with your servant, in an alternate 1930s where all shall be quite well in the end?

My games are light-hearted, super-branchy narratives inspired by P.G. Wodehouse's worlds of well-to-do young folks with more money than sense. My games are designed to have the reader's back no matter what choice you make.

Right now, I'm almost 3 million words deep into my fourth game.

Here's my past games:

In Tally Ho (620,000 words) you play a servant charged with the welfare of your hapless employer who has managed to tangle themself up in terrible romantic, familial, and master-servant difficulties. Play some of it for free at the above link!

In Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale (1.2 million words) you play the employer! Now, with your own servant, you can create the terrible romantic, familial, and financial, and scandalous, etc., etc., situations and let someone else clean up the mess. Or make it much, much worse. This game was the Winner of three 2020 XYZZY Awards: (Best Writing, Best Setting, Best NPCs). Play some of it for free at the above link!

I've also written a Shakespearean comedy pastiche, called A Midsummer Night's Choice. This one is much shorter and less complex.

My current game is the sequel to Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale, and is called Jolly Good: Tea and Scones. Continue the story of your Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale character, visit your ancestral manor, and deal with both your present servant and the servant who quit your employ out of sheer disgust! (I am halfway through chapter seven of eight chapters, and this work-in-progress stands at nearly three million words.)

If you like the sound of a very, very long piece of interactive fiction which is designed to be cozy, funny, and deeply responsive to your choices, check back here--and check out my Patreon for peeks at my work in progress, additional fiction, and musings on what it is like to write long-form, choice-heavy interactive fiction. Each month, you'll be able to see various lengthy tranches of my game. Swing by!

You can play a sizeable chunk of chapter one as a free demo should you care to partake, and the entire, 270k+ words chapter one for patrons.

[sunlight-shunlight]

thinking about veilguard and bioware in general, i think we are reaching a point where people need to grapple with the inherent limits of what stories can be told in our Current Society and in AAA gaming companies.

on a labour level: mass layoffs, tons of developers leaving despite previously talking about how passionate and happy they were to be involved, not even paying severance, and crunching employees to the point of burnout. this is unfortunately pretty standard for AAA game companies.

on a cultural level: it is SO white and SO centrist-ly Canadian. i wrote up these asks outlining how. it is a repeated pattern of writing in which they go into tortured racial oppression allegories at best, while constantly peppering in a "but BOTH SIDES were wrong and made mistakes :( :( :(", in between their fictional atrocities that are clearly mirroring irl genocides and enslavement. or at worst, it's "the qunari are radical islamic borg" which has even less nuance. i personally thought, since dai came out in 2014, and a lot has changed since then about the world and in public awareness, that this would have filtered into the narrative and resulted in more satisfying and historically grounded writing. unfortunately not the case. it's shocking if you compare it to how sharp and aware and unflinching something like disco elysium is.

so what does this mean?

under these conditions, it is unavoidable that we get development by people who are rapidly cycled out of the company or demoralized into burnout. we get digestible, easy little soundbites of lore without much substance, because any complexity needs more time and coordination rather than the process of "quick, we have these assets, a lot of people involved in making them just got laid off, we need to make Something by next quarter to show the CEO". we get very little cohesion between games, despite the clear intent from dai to have so many plot points set up to follow through in a sequel, because the team and development are so chaotic that they can't hold onto a vision and complete it.

we also get this inherent caution and "conservatism" from the narrative, because on an ideological level, they're largely white people who want cops to be included in pride. so any major change to even a fictional society is Bad and Scary, and shouldn't be done without making sure that every character finger-wags appropriately at non-state violence. there is clearly not much ideological or even ethnic diversity within the leadership; or at least not enough that anyone there felt comfortable even speaking up on minor issues like the Incredibly Orientalist Isabela Outfit, let alone anything larger.

i don't personally think there's too much value in trying to analyze veilguard's plot or lore at this point. the final product is chaotically developed and does not seem to reflect the goals of the creators as set up in prior games, it's basically a ship of theseus in terms of the people and ideas involved in making it. this is sad for all of us, who were interested in the story, and attached to the characters, and were creatively fulfilled by engaging in the fandom. it's probably worse for the developers who have lost their jobs, burnt out, or feel unhappy with the game that they spent years of their life working on. it's certainly miserable as an indictment of The Industry, as well as the general societal climate of white Canadian centrism.

the solution is to create a society where people can develop games in peace and prosperity and stay on projects for longer, rather than constantly getting turfed out without severance pay. and to get some genuine leftists, poc, and indigenous people on staff who can weigh in and provide significant input, rather than a Council Of Liberal White Edmontonians every time.

in the meantime, at the very least, let's please stop preordering AAA games and supporting companies who notably abuse their employees.

[robo-milky]

Rookugoka!

[L -> R]

Rakugo (落語, literally 'story with a fall')[1] is a form of Japanese verbal comedy, traditionally performed in yose theatres.[2] The lone storyteller (落語家, rakugoka) sits on a raised platform, a kōza (高座). Using only a paper fan (扇子, sensu) and a small cloth (手拭, tenugui) as props, and without standing up from the seiza sitting position, the rakugo artist depicts a long and complicated comical (or sometimes sentimental) story.

[Comments]

Just like our lovely Cloche here, pLEASE READ “AKANE-BANASHI” !! This manga about Rakugo is what inspired this short and I am BRAINROTTING WITH A RAKUGOKA AU- (unfortunately with Rollo cause it’s so different from his usual personality)

This year, I AM HERE TO RECLAIM MY TITLE AS ROOK’S TROPHY WIFE— …or not ahaha- Rook is still my type but Rollo’s taken more of mind lately 😔 Anyways— back to my doujin era for y’all!

[fir-fireweed]

What is the threshold to meet to have a high relationship with MCs sister?

Also will there ever be a published guide so we can all see those hidden extra scenes?

Anything 40% and up is considered a good relationship with Eva. But if you’re asking about high enough to influence her crush, I believe it’s 70%.

You know, I hadn’t thought about a guide. 🤔 There are a lot of hidden tidbits in this chapter. At this point there are no full scenes hidden, but maybe extensions on existing scenes. For instance, if you have high enough with Vicente AND you chose to inform Corinne about them, Eva teases you about him in your conversation with her. I’m curious if anyone saw that.

So crowdsourcing this… would you all be interested in a guide? Maybe a master post with all the extra hidden stuff? If I do this it’d release after the chapter itself, so as not to spoil anything.

[battleclawed]

Coryn meeting Kludd’s scroom in The Hatchling

[maunsi]

the fucking implications of porter (in the finale preview) talking abt how the bk were screwed over by aguefort while in front of the rat grinders. like one of these groups he somewhat likes and the other are disposable pawns. the tragedy of the rat grinders are that for everything that they stood for (equity/equality) is still not on their side in the end!! they haven't become the heroes, they've become the goon squad to the major BBEG!!!

[amuelia]

small drawing as im looking forward to watching tales of the empire tomorrow

[blacktabbygames]

Decided to finally go through and size-up how much writing we've done for Episode 5 and it's apparently already 195,000 words long. It'll be about double that once it's done. Maybe more 🙃

For reference: Slay the Princess has ~158,000 words in total.

Episode 4 had ~185,000 words in total.

Anyways please bear in mind that this is the main reason it's taking us so gottang long to put this out. And when it comes, know that there will be much much much much much Content™ for you to explore!

[box953]

if you dont fuck w jacobi and maxwell being best friends forever you dont fuck with me. Highlight of s3 relisten for me so far has been listening to them banter. It’s such a different banter from what you get from everyone else butting heads it’s so bouncy. It tells you they do this all the time but like. They’re friends about it. They hate each other but they also do nefarious shit together theyre bonded forever . Until the incident of course but i digress .

[paper-possum-party-pal]

Our favorite British bastard in situations!

Companion piece to the Stanley drawings!

Closeups!

And an extra older sketch featuring a centaur narrator based on @cosmokrill’s drawings of the narrator as a centaur which tells you I made these drawings after little after June 22! Go look at their art it’s so huggable looking!