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 with sadie ng
Media Type: Game
Platform: Web-based
Released: September 2019
Made for: Personal project
Created with: Twine
Coded in: Twine markup
Developers: Cass Aleatory with sadie ng
ESCAPE is an interactive fiction adventure made with the storytelling platform Twine—I think of it as a playable Choose Your Own Adventure book, allowing players to take actions and deliver dialogue from the point of view of the game's main character. 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, 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 branches out exponentially).
I intented ESCAPE to be the story of a group of teenagers 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 was only one ending, but players could choose how they get there and which of the story's characters get there with them. Having the players' decisions mostly affect how characters perceive the player kept the number of branching possibilities in the story in check without detracting from the player's ability to influence the world around them.
For as much as I enjoyed working on this game, it was ultimately held back by what I'd later discover to be ADHD and DS/RN (demand avoidance). I was so eager to get my thoughts written down before my spacey brain lost track of them that I worked at top speed, writing a ton of bland filler content. When the structure was finished, my brain was bored, and I couldn't make myself go back and flesh out the frame with the sort of nuanced writing that would drain hour and hour as I nitpicked the wording incessantly. As a result, the biggest regret I have about this project is how uncompelling the prose is and, by extension, how it held back my attempt at the multidimensional characterization that I'd always intended to serve as the very core of ESCAPE.
Expected release date: Fall 2025
ESCAPE Ultimate will, in all likelihood, be the final content update for ESCAPE. The scale of this 'update' is closer to an expansion, however. In addition to finally giving the dialogue the attention that it deserves, I'm revisiting all the ideas that I never had time or patience to implement before. Some six years after its release, the story of ESCAPE will be fully built out, with better characterization, a more nuanced relationship system, new locations, new dialogue, two new core characters, and a combat system that features 'weapons' straight off a carnival prize rack. There will also be a new overarching story arc that will finally force players to make a truly meaningful decision. I'm determined to learn from my past mistakes, so I won't be letting myself rush through development this time. With sadie holding me accountable, nothing I'd envisioned for this little world will be left on the table. ESCAPE Ultimate will be a conclusion worthy of everything that making this game has meant to me.
"whether you choose to love by letting go or hold tight to the past, I hope we will all find our own Escape." - cass aleatory
I did everything in the original: wrote the story, designed the game, created the cover art, and programmed it all in Twine. I'm also be doing all the Twine programming for ESCAPE: Ultimate, but the rest of the distribution of labor is still in flux.