Year: 2023
Duration: 3 weeks
Team size: 1
Description: My first ever real practice with quest design.
Link to Itch.io: https://fluffymichael.itch.io/the-choice
!! If you plan on playing the game, do so before reading the rest of this article, as it will contain spoilers to the ending of the game !!
Story overview
“You wake up inside a strange-looking apartment, with no real memories of the outside world. The only thing connecting you to the outside world is a single laptop.”
The player is locked inside a sort of a matrix machine. The machine was made and programmed by the kidnapper, who’s made the device to get revenge on the player for what they did.
From the players perspective, they’re inside a strange-looking apartment. They don’t know why they’re there and what they did, as the system did a temporary memory wipe. The kidnapper’s goal is to see if their soul is still worth saving. They plan on showing the player the consequences of someone’s (their) actions, by showing them video logs about one of the employees of an unnamed company. Going through their entire work life, from starting out, to dying there. These videos aren’t necessarily in order, except for the first one. The player can get access to more logs through a series of tests and puzzles. The player will have to decide whether they think if this person is worthy of redemption.
In the last act of the game the player will unlock a video, where they can see their own introduction log. There the player will find out that they are in fact the newly assigned boss and are responsible for the deaths within the company.
Will the player still think they are worthy of redemption?
Game mechanics
Since the game is mainly focused on storytelling, the game mechanics themselves are kept quite simple. There are three main puzzle types:
- A jigsaw puzzle
- Connect the wires
- Solve the cryptex
After solving one of these puzzles, the player will receive either a colour code or a key. The keys have quite a simple use: opening doors and cabinets. The colour codes can be entered into the laptop to unlock a certain video log.
After enough videos have been watched, the player will start to feel tired. When they go to bed, they will be presented with a choice: “Is the boss worthy of a second chance?” They can then choose: worthy, unsure or unworthy. The first two times the player can do this, it has no real impact in game, but is more served as a moment of reflection for the player. The last time they are given this choice, their answer will determine the ending of the game. Here are the choices, and their respective endings:
- Worthy: The screen goes black, and the player can hear a door opening and closing with sounds of the outside going on.
- Unsure: The simulation ‘loops’ AKA, the first few seconds of the opening scene are played again.
- Unworthy: The screen goes black, and the player can hear themselves flatlining.
The process
I started the making process by asking myself one particular question: “Would you judge your own actions the same as you would someone else’s?”
From there I started outlining the storyline in chronological order. Only after everything else was in place, did I split up the story in the order the player would discover them in. When I was doing that, I decided to split the game up into three acts. In each act, the player would feel differently about the new boss and their answer to the question.
In Act 1, the player would know something bad happened, but not what exactly. In Act 2, the player would know that people had died. And in Act 3, they would know that they were responsible for the incident in the first place.
While I was working on the storyline, I was simultaneously working on the different puzzle mechanics and where they would take place.
– Fun fact, the apartment the game takes place in is my actual apartment. –
I divided the apartment into different sections and subsections and decided when the player would get access to each area.
A quick look into my work document
Takes for the future
I would really like to take this to a bigger scale. Not necessarily with this storyline, as it was made to be quite linear for the set scope I had. But one with more intertwining perspectives.
I noticed that I had the most fun when I was listening back to the audio recordings that I had made, in the same order that the player would discover them. I loved putting myself into the shoes of someone who had no idea where the story would go and discovering each piece of information. I love how you can create your own drama when you can just withhold certain pieces of information. That can really drive a player into wanting to play more of the game to find out what’s really going on.
After making this, I can’t wait for bigger projects with more intertwined story- and plotlines for which players can go hunting for.