#text game dev

[loressa]

I used to write a bunch for MUDs, and a few years ago, I decided I wanted to try making my own game. I started as a writer/QA/project management for my first few game jams because I was struggling to create something fully on my own.

This hybrid “help as needed” role let me get hands on experience and showed me a deeper look behind the scenes of how games are made, without being overwhelmed by all the setup needed to get my hands in the mess – I had previously been daunted by the basics of just setting up engines and SDKs and CLIs and virtual environments and all that stuff.

This was the result from the first game where I did design/heavy writing focus and no code: https://misc-mike.itch.io/bookworm

We had envisioned something impressive with the player changing the story, but as development continued we learned about scoping and timelines: our coder ran out of time, so I focused on finding us public domain images and twisting together a concept of a thing that would work with the functions we had coded. The result is kinda cute.

From there, I tried out making my own games using a range of different engines which focused on text-heavy development:

Twine: webdev (eg CSS, html) for interactive hypertext

Choicescript: uses very basic scripting for interactive cyoa novels

Ren’Py: uses python for visual novels

Quest and QuestJS: for text adventures

Adventuron: designed to teach children how to code via making text adventures

This is not an exhaustive list – https://intfiction.org/ is a great resource for even more options such as TADS.

Read more on my blog because I'm old and still have one and apparently Tumblr has a character limit for posts: https://thoughts.games/2024/09/30/getting-into-game-dev-as-a-writer/

[vigilskept]

bioware devs should get to kill their executives with hammers over this.

however,

it is also true that there was no point in that dev cycle at which they had absorbed the critique that their games are deeply saturated with settler-colonialism, antisemitism & a “clash of civilizations” mentality that hasn’t been unpacked.

both of these things can be true.

[taffywabbit]

so like. at what point are we going to stop listening to game companies saying "the game was poorly received and didn't meet our sales targets, and that's why we're removing it from storefronts and taking down all the servers mere months or even weeks after release" for titles that had a long expensive development, were barely marketed, and nobody knew they'd even released until after they heard they were getting shut down and couldn't be played/purchased anymore?

I feel like the prevailing takeaway for anyone who doesn't just conclude "yeah, game was pretty mid, makes sense to me" has usually been "this company just has unreasonably impossible sales expectations and treats every project like a failure if it doesn't print a trillion dollars". but these ARE allegedly experienced business execs who aren't complete idiots, and after this most recent debacle with Concord I'm starting to wonder if a bunch of these "games getting wiped out of existence when they underperform instead of just being allowed to persist as they are and maybe improve with time" cases in recent years might be more of a Warner-Discovery type situation, like nuking an entire animated series or film that was worked on for years and preventing it from being sold because it has to be officially unprofitable for the company to use it as a tax write-off. I look at a game that was worked on for 8 years and only made available for 2 weeks, and it's hard not to see the parallels.

great work, AAA games industry, really normal and sustainable stuff you're doing over there as usual

[novaceresart]

DEMO OUT!

Awaken in a derelict factory with your only view outside constrained to a set of security cameras. Explore a politically tense industrial environment, with a point-and-click and text adventure style of gameplay as you uncover the fate of those who worked there… before the same fate falls upon you.

[captain-chapish]

after reading the article about Veilguard's development-- jfc what they put the DA BioWare devs through is insane

Can you imagine shipping DAI after a tumultuous production, but your next project is looking promising but WHOOPS you're forced to work on a multiplayer vision of the next game for years, and you KNOW fans won't like DESPITE the previous game having sold millions of copies.

meanwhile your studio deliveries two other games that are generally negatively received by the public and had their own crazy ass developments, one of the sister studios (Montreal) gets canned as a result, senior leadership is resigning, and then you get asked to perform a fucking miracle with DATV by reworking it in under two years, right after suffering the pandemic AND going through a writer and actor's strike????

and then after a decade of being tossed around and ignored, the game is finally out and... you get fucking fired

jesus fucking Christ. the devs deserved so much better.

[redspringstudio]

Where are all these red choices coming from 😯❓ That choice means reaching out to pet Vere’s ears, right? No? Ok

[nemurenaivoron]

the more I think about the current state of the Mistria lore, the more I feel like the museum is one of its weakest parts

most of the tutorials and interactions tip toe around trying to not break the 4th wall too hard, to avoid saying "yes, you need to do that because you are The Player, and we cannot do that because We Are NPCs" but you're telling me that this happy go lucky community that gather together to do renovations and Friday gatherings and all that cannot donate a single bug to the Museum? Cannot bring in a flower? A shrimp?

You're telling me Luc keeps every single worm and beetle he finds and never had a thought to donate one to the museum? Celine, the all caring and kind Celine, never thought to help the town get a higher status by bringing in some flowers? Terithia wouldn't want to immortalise some of her best catches by bringing them to the display? Olric, the member of the Historical Society (when he remembers it), wouldn't bring in a cool rock he found? I feel like even Balor would chip in with some old pot he thought has no value (until Eiland starts elaborating for 5 hours about the historical value of it).

I feel like it'd make more sense if Errol said that everyone is involved and that "the best ones will be put on display" and when the wings open you'd see your flowers next to Celine's and your fish next to Terithia, some beetles from Luc, maybe a frog from Dell (it's not required for the museum but Dell insisted), and ofc there'd be some weird rocks from Olric (when he remembers), and some relics from Eiland and Balor.

And then there'd be more variety to the NPC lines too. Terithia being competitive on who gets the bigger fish into the museum. Balor finding it funny that he submitted the same artifact as you did earlier this week and he didn't even know it was an artifact until Eiland- you know.

[amaregames]

In just over a week the 2025 Amare Games Festival will begin!

A celebration of love and diversity in story-focused games.

For this game festival we invite you to create or update an existing game.

Changes This year we have made a couple of changes to the festival to better suit the needs of the community. The main change being that the festival now takes place in February and runs for 6 weeks till mid-March.

For those who have participated in previous Amare Festivals, we kindly ask you to review the rules of the festival so you are aware of any changes that have been made.

Make sure to sign up on the festival page below!

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

[sanshofox]

Well this hella sounds like their other statement, from months ago, just before their huge layoff. They even used some of the same words and phrasings. Really this doesn’t sound too good for bioware in general 🥲

[allieebobo]

December Dev Log

Happy New Year everyone!

December was busy with lots of feasting and family time, but I did manage to get a lot of writing done :) 

As always, as this year winds to a close, I want to thank all of you guys for being with me on this journey, and supporting me through everything. Your messages and love for the game always, always make every hour I spend working on Merry Crisis or CT:OS worth it. <3 Interacting with you guys is a huge part of what made 2024 so incredible for me. 

I don't know if every creator is so lucky as to feel this way,  but I honestly get out of bed every morning excited to read the new messages you guys have sent at night (though definitely time difference is a huge factor in this haha) and get started with writing!

This is the second instalment of the monthly dev logs that I'll be writing to keep you guys updated on what's been happening! (This was last month's.)

Read the Dev Log here!

[larkingame]

Play as Preacher Abrams, prolific vampire hunter (and pathetic preacher) in Larkin! Demo out now!

[shmowder]

yk it's always something when a game borrows from middle-eastern culture, aesthetics, and mythology or just outright takes it all as the main hook, and when you check the long list of supported languages, Arabic is nowhere in sight

[ajastu]

sigh...

[puts on my clown hat] alright. i need to say something.

people trying to say that trans/nonbinary representation in veilguard is the worst thing thats happened to the trans community in the last half a year (im exaggerating here but u get my point) need to sit down and ask themselves a couple of questions.

1. Are you nonbinary? If not, do you know someone who is? Have you talked to them about their experiences and what its like to not fit into the strict gender binary that permeates our society on almost every level?

2. Do you think that your experiences are universal?

if you answer no and yes in that order, then i'm going to have to ask you to please put the keyboard aside and go do some self-reflection.

Because frankly. I'm kind of starting to get sick of seeing binary people try to talk about this while completely not understanding the experience and also thinking that their personal perspective is the only true and correct one.

Like, the amount of times ive seen people COMPLETELY misinterpret the scene with Taash and Neve talking in the dining room is ridiculous.

Some things are just not about you. And that's okay <3

[silver-horse]

I like the little walks we can have with Theresa in kcd1 and the dialogues and and gifting her dresses (although I wish she would actually wear them during the day, not just the evening) . In so many video games, romance ends the moment you unlocked the final scene and then you can't even interact with the character anymore, there is almost 0 indication that you even romanced them. This approach in kcd is much better. She is giving me small things when i visit, i can ask her to mend my clothes, even the simple scene that repeats, where they just walk together, makes it feel like going home to the girlfriend and spending time with her.

[redspringstudio]

Hmm… This choice wasn’t in the demo 🤔 Do you think Kuras minds holding sweaty, clammy hands? Asking for a friend.