The Priestess in Cage (Twine or Bitsy Narrative Game)
* This is a collaborative project by Xintong Ye and Yang Hong.
Aims and Objectives
This is a narrative game in which players can take different roles and rebuild what had happened by looping in the narrative structure, kind of like the novel Rashōmon by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. For a more purposeful experience, characters are settled with different main gaming targets according to their stories, for example, “to keep alive by the end” or “to find a way to solve the problem”.
At first, this game was designed to be suitable for 2 players, while the players’ choices influences each other’s further story step by step. But this was finally deprecated and turned to character choosing at the beginning, as according to playtest, two players’ storylines showing on the same screen with less UI would bring confusion and disturb players’ experience. This idea might be better to be applied with some engines other than twine.
Tutorialisation and visual direction
A simple guide like “click to look around” is set up at the beginning to provide knowledge on how to operate for players who have never been with this type of game.
Coloured the text of different endings in red or green, going along with the style of storytelling, to imply whether the ending is bad or good.
Playtest and feedback
1. For the first version we worked out, according to a player’s feedback, there’s no sufficient worldview information for players who are trying to understand what’s happening at the beginning of the game. In addition, before players realise that the story belongs to another world, they prefer to imagine it the happens in the real world of the day. In that case, those options will be too calm as the characters are facing murder. And thus it will keep them feeling weird until they get enough information.
In response to these, 1. the beginning has been lengthened to give the player an adjustment process; 2. a considerable number of descriptions of the characters’ psychological activities have been added to complement the background and give the player a proper direction to imagine.
2. There is no lack of storylines that tread different paths but lead to the same destination. After players got familiar with that, they would tend to drop straightly back while seeing options with an alike look to previous ones. Up to now, there isn’t much influence to be found about this matter, except that the estimated gameplay time might be shortened.