At A Glance
Media Type: Game
Platform: Web-based
Released: September 2019
Made for: Personal project
Created with: Twine
Coded in: Twine markup
Developers: Cass Aleatory (solo project)
Media Type: Game
Platform: Web-based
Released: September 2019
Made for: Personal project
Created with: Twine
Coded in: Twine markup
Developers: Cass Aleatory (solo project)
ESCAPE was my first chance to fully cut loose as a game writer. It's the story of a group of middle schoolers trapped in an amusement park by bad luck and circumstance. Not only do they need to find their way out, but they each need to escape from other things that are holding them back. The story is relatively linear, but the choices you make will affect how the characters around you perceive you... and how loyal they'll be to you when the going gets tough. There's only one ending, but you choose how you get there, and who gets there with you.
ESCAPE is an interactive fiction adventure made with the storytelling platform Twine. In other words, it's kinda like a playable Choose Your Own Adventure book. It's told in first person, allowing you to take actions and deliver dialogue from the point of view of the main character.
Creating ESCAPE was super gratifying and exciting! For once, I had a chance to write something without having any outside constraints imposed on me by a class, game jam, or collaborators. Working on ESCAPE provided a valuable lesson in the extent my own capabilities, as well as the game genre's narrative potential. Creating its complex and decision-based structure was a tremendous confidence booster for me, and it also forced me to think critically about some of the classic problems with game stories (ex. how to offer truly meaningful decisions without creating a story tree that grows exponentially).
I ultimately overcame struggles like these by leaning into decisions' abilities to affect characters' perceptions of the player instead of simply using them to alter the course of the plot. Having the players' decisions mostly just affect how characters perceive the player keeps the number of branching possibilities in the story in check without detracting from the player's ability to influence the world around them.
Everything! I wrote the story, designed the game, created the cover art, and programmed it all in Twine.