MxAshlynn

coder, producer, music fan, teagirl


my building-gamer blog
cohost.org/MxBuilder
my yurivania shrine
midnightpalace.gay/
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in reply to @MxAshlynn's post:

Usually I try to get a decent idea of the choices, or whether I should include them at all, during the design phase already, but I'm kind of design nut anyway. In pure VN kind of games, I might nail them down before I write any of the story, but in games with gameplay, it can more organic. If the flow of the story feels lacking, I might change them pretty late into the development process too, but I'd rather not because, well, I'm a design nut. 😄

There are two ways I usually approach it.

The first way is structural, just thinking about how i want choices used in a given game. Are choices supposed to come up to direct the flow of a route or are they meant to help you learn more about a character or are they there mainly as flavor between major plot points, etc.

The other way I approach things is by thinking about how I want the player to feel about the choices they're given. Sometimes a choice can be casual and other times dialogue choices can make player stress and sweat and sometimes it can really play with how much agency and control the player feels that they have.

My VN ideas tend to include some major branching from the start but I don’t tend to think of it as “including player choice,” more like “including the MC’s choices”

I tend to think about a scenario and then think about how the MC might react to that scenario and what outcomes might occur based on that. In the planning stage this is usually quite general, like

MC -> eats too much cake and gets a tummyache -> goes home early from the party OR -> eats a reasonable amount of cake and feels okay -> stays at party

if I come up with specific dialogue I’ll put it in the notes.

Otherwise then I just start writing the script and once I come to the branching point in the story I’ll write a choice corresponding to the MC reaction which could lead to the potential outcomes

if the game feels sparse I’ll add choices for flavour/lore

Exceptions:

  • if there’s a choice system I want to explore, like “sending different text messages” or “dress-up minigame,” i might center a whole game around it and craft a story that makes the choice system meaningful
  • for funny little short games i worry less about meaningful MC choices and go more “hehe wouldn’t it be great if you had to choose your favourite colour and then got gifted a square of that colour”

I don’t tend to make games that don’t have significant choices in them, because thinking about different scenarios is a big part of what I think is interesting about making games! I only have one game that doesn’t have significant choices (I Want To Be A Circle When I Grow Up) and I did that because a) it was for a 3-day jam and b) i had other forms of interactivity to explore in it, namely a button that makes things spin

(Actually you could say that game is the epitome of "centering the MC choices over the player's choices" because the only choice in the game is a random one (i.e. based on whatever the MCs feel like)

Thanks for the detailed response!
This perspective of framing any branching in terms of the player character rather than the player themself makes a lot of sense to me. I will keep this in mind!