SeanMay Posted June 3, 2017 So this is going to be my second attempt at making a Twine game for Wizard Jam. I'm really excited to get this started. The title I picked, "I'll Kill The Last Alien" spurred me to write a bit of a prologue that will start off the game in some way: ------------------------- We called them Voids because looking at them was like staring at nothing and everything at the same time. It's hard to describe the sensation, seeing a shape that you can't quite comprehend but knowing that it is there, and in all likelihood wants to kill you. And kill they did. This ship was on its way to Gliese 832 c, the closest habitable planet we could find after Earth and Mars were a lost cause...at least the closest one that wouldn't freeze us to death or immolate us as we entered the atmosphere. 16 lightyears away. And we made it almost 10 of those before they got to us. It's been 4 years since they breeched our hull and started to take over. We didn't even realize what had happened until a year later, when a few crew members they had infected decided to flush all the cooling fluid for the jumpdrive into space. We thought it was terrorism at first, when the neutron core went critical and blinked half the ship out of existence in a second. 535,341 people dead in a tenth of a second. We thought losing that many people was our biggest worry. Now, reflecting on it, they were probably the lucky ones. The Void that were on the other side of the bulkhead, the side of the ship that survived, decided to drop the pretense and reveal their true form. They didn't need to hide anymore, now that they had the advantage. We couldn't warp home if we wanted to. Now it was time for them to toy with us. They hunted us through the corridors of the ship, eviscerating vast swaths of people with no hesitation. The number of survivors dwindled. First 400,000....then after a month, we were down to 30,000 left alive on the ship...if living in fear of every moment counted as 'living'. Over time, we learned how to avoid them. They could effortlessly phase through ballistic glass to slaughter whoever was unlucky enough to be in the room on the other side, but putting even paper on the windows rendered them incapable of moving through. We lost another 10,000 people even after that, people unlucky enough to be in the hallway when one of them passed, people who weren't watching the security camera feeds close enough...and probably more than a few who just wanted to die and stop living in constant fear. But then, about a year ago, we started fighting back. And to our surprise, we started winning. It turned out there was a reason they boarded our ship when it was in the darkest, most remote area along our path. UV Light was their enemy. We started developing weapons made out of whatever we could find, cobbling together crude UV "rifles" that would produce a concentrated beam of light. It tore right through them like they were made of wet paper. Funny thing was that the thing that saved us was moving ourselves into the History Park section of the ship. The LED lighting we used for everything else on the ship didn't put out enough UV to stop them, but the ancient incandescent and fluorescent bulbs used in the simulations of environments from the 1930s-2000s put out enough UV to keep the things away. One by one, we started rebuilding. And we stared killing them, getting bolder as we developed our UV weapons with more precision and power. We were down to 15,321 survivors when we realized there was just one of them left. On the far side of the ship, near the bulkhead that saved our lives once before. According to the security cam feeds, it looks almost like the thing is trying to escape the ship...but if these things can't phase through paper, they definitely can't phase through 32 feet of solid inconel-titanium alloy. We all agreed that killing the thing was our only choice. I was the woman unlucky enough to draw the short straw to have to do it. They put me in glowing UV armor and gave me the best rifle they could slap together, along with a backpack full of UV grenades. It's overkill, but we've learned not to leave things to chance. Everyone is watching me as I lay my hand against the 'Open' button to enter the parts of the ship no person other than the Strike Teams have seen for two years at this point. This is my task. I'll kill the last alien. ----------------------------------------- The 'game' itself really serves as just a way to move through a story non-linearly as the player character traverses the ship on their way to killing the last alien aboard. There will be audio logs, diary entires, and memories of what life was like before things got torn apart. So, less game, more interactive fiction. I'll post updates and builds here as I move through the dev process. Also, if anyone would want to collaborate on some art for the game, I'd like to have some visual elements but lack the ability to actually draw. I'm on the IT Slack or you can just message me through the forums if you're interested. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SeanMay Posted June 4, 2017 Dev day one went pretty well, I feel like the story is firming up. I went ahead and created a map for the ship (which I've called the Valiant) to allow building out the story a little easier. I'm going to work first on mostly writing the critical path to get to the 'end' of the story, even though that's not really the main point of this game, but it'll give me a good idea of the boundaries of the story, and I can go back and fill it in. Essentially the protagonist will move through the environment and they'll have the opportunity to interact with objects that launch them into a side-story featuring a character who had owned the object or did something meaningful in the room. I realize I'm sort of channeling What Remains of Edith Finch here, even though I haven't played it yet. I've also included a picture of what the story looks like in Twine right now. There's a ton more to do (and a lot of writing), but I like where this is going! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JTerry Posted June 5, 2017 Really enjoying the narrative heavy approach to this prompt, excited to play it when it's done Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SeanMay Posted June 5, 2017 8 hours ago, JTerry said: Really enjoying the narrative heavy approach to this prompt, excited to play it when it's done Thanks, fellow developer of a game called I'll Kill The Last Alien! Yours is looking like a lot of fun as well! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SeanMay Posted June 7, 2017 After making no progress yesterday on this, I came back to it today and got a lot of planning done. I've planned it out to where you can reach the 'end' and discovered some things along the way (like my protagonist's name and the real reason the aliens invaded the ship, which is good to know). As of right now, I know this is going to take a lot of writing, and getting it finished by the end of the jam will be tough, but I'm really excited to do it. The space of the story has expanded so much since the first foray into it, but I think, once done, there really could be something here! Tomorrow will bring planning out a couple more side stories, then actually starting to write the damn thing. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SeanMay Posted June 8, 2017 Well, today's short work session was dominated by discovering that the names for my passages didn't work well in Twine. Apparently Twine doesn't play nice with passages that use the _ character. Alright, more tomorrow, I'll begin the day by correcting the ~50 incorrect passage names. Yay. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JTerry Posted June 8, 2017 I feel this hard, I got home tonight around 11:30 with the intention of developing more features and found out my 3 hours of work from Monday were lost! So I spent my time tonight redoing all of it, which wasn't ideal. Silver lining: The code was much easier to write the second time around You got this! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SeanMay Posted June 16, 2017 Well, this is a sad update for me. It was probably not the best time for me to start up working on something when my life was so turbulent, and the last couple of weeks have been really bad, not conducive to game development (things have gotten better though!) So obviously the game won't be ready for the end of the jam, but I do feel like I have a good base to develop something once things stabilize for me! I'm so impressed with all the great stuff everyone has been putting out over the course of this jam, hopefully next time I'll be in a place where I can complete something too! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Lama Himself Posted June 16, 2017 Hope everything will get in order soon Sean! If time allows, diving in a project can be really helpful during stressful times (as long as it doesn't add to the stress overall) I am looking for playing you game when you finally finish it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
