Starting from Scratch: Nightcap
For those of you who are unaware, beyond writing books I am also a narrative designer for video games at Miller Games, a studio that currently consists of my husband and myself. While my website does reflect that at this point if you go through and take a peek, it didn't until this morning when I decided to share that information with this blog.
For some reason, my brain tends to want to compartmentalize everything, and I mean everything. I even wanted to keep my narrative design and author "identities" separate, as if each piece of myself has to be treated as an individual entity. I can't even tell you if I've benefited or suffered from this line of thinking over the years, it's just what I did.
Well, that ends now. I am a single person with diverse interests and I will share those interests as I see fit, and I've decided to share about this game that I thought up and am currently developing. I'm doing just about everything except the audio, that will be handled by Austin (check them out here), but art and story are all on me.
It's called Nightcap.
I don't want to give away much as the game is still very early in development, but the long and short is this will be a visual novel about navigating relationship conflicts. I pitched the idea of how the game would function to my husband and, to my surprise, they loved the idea! They told me to look up Twine, and that I could realistically make this game just about by myself with that. About a week later, I finally took the time to investigate.
For those like me with little to no coding experience, Twine is a godsend for games like this. In less than a week, I've managed to start fully from scratch and get through almost the entire intro of the game, split decisions and all. For real, this software is intuitive and robust, giving me the customizability I want and need with minimal complication. I know I'll need some help when it comes to making a title screen or formatting the pages, but those are challenges I know will be rewarding enough to complete that I'll stick with them.
This is all I have of my game so far. To most, I'm sure it looks like a few grey boxes with yellow or orange highlights, but to me I see three branching introduction paths that let you, the player, decide how you want your story to play out. It's thrilling! The thought of learning how people play, what decisions and ending they get, it gives me the strength to keep pushing through when I get to the confusing or difficult parts.
I will post more updates as I work through more of the game, but for now I'm so pleased with the progress I've made. How many times will even this part get rewritten? Who knows! How much more is left to do? I'm sure even more than I'm anticipating!
But I'm too excited to stay here typing up more blog post. I have work to do!