Week #27 - Writing (Knee) Deep Dive!
Hello there!
This week I've been working on the rewrite I was talking about. This is actually what I plan to do in the following week as well, but while we are at it, let's go in on this all rewrite thing.
For those of you that don't know what the story of the game is about, here is a synopsis:
You are a new student at a school, and once you get there you join a secret 'legends disproving' club in order to prove they are all false.
But - WHOOPS, one of them turns out to be real, causing you to get some kind of superpower.
So if one of the legends is real, maybe all of them are?
So let's start with 'What was bad with the last story iteration':
In the last few playtests the player was kind of dragged to be in the club. He has no saying in the matter, and people REALLY felt it.
There are a lot of characters interacting with you right away, which can be a bit overwhelming.
You don't know what is going on, and you probably don't care.
And the last one is the BIG problem. I want you to care. I NEED you to care. Therefore, I need to change things around.
So what am I doing to fix it?
Aligning the character 'wants' with the player. While I tried to tease the main characters past in the last playtest, you still don't know what the character wants in its new environment. I'm working on making what the character wants to achieve clearer, and on making the player want the same thing.
Giving the player more of a choice on when to join the club and how to pursue it. I won't go in on how I plan on doing that because it's still in the making, but the idea is to at the very least let the player know about the club and making him want to join in before allowing it to happen.
Trying to make the game 'hooks' better:
Bigger glimpse to the lore of the game at the start
Trying to create a deeper connection with one character before dumping you on a lot of them
I believe these things should help to make the experience way better.
Other then that, I'm working on fleshing out the the 7 school legends, and the entirety of the lore. This should make it way easier to go forward in developing the next few segments of the game.
As always, please let me know what you think about everything I wrote in here!
See you next week (: