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[Aniki]

Hi everyone !

I am working on an interactive fiction / gamebook for mobile called Somewhere.

Plot

Cat is a journalist who has been contacted by a whistleblower but she is rapidly overwhelmed by the scope of a worldwide-scale agro-industrial case.
She tries to escape from a mysterious entity's surveillance, but she can't trust anyone.
Threatened, hunted, now there is no other way for her but to reveal the whole scandal.
It is a life or death matter, she has to do it, in order to warn the worldwide population, but also to save her life!
Her only hope is to get in touch with a contact person, supposedly here to help journalists in such sensitive investigations.
Unfortunately, the number she got was - intentionally or not - wrong and she instead gets in touch... with you!


Description

This is a game where you are not the hero, but you'll have to help Cat !
She will contact you for support, advices, and you'll have to help her make the best decisions.
Just like in classical CYOA books, the story will be tailored by the choices you make.

Also, the game rhythm is story driven, and basically you don't even choose when you play, because of the 'real time' aspect of it : Cat will go 'offline' when busy, and she'll contact you only when she's done. You will receive a notification on your phone at this time.
The story takes place nowadays and we try to make it as realistic as possible


Inspiration

This concept is really close to good old gamebooks of course, I had a few of them when I was a kid and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is probably the one I read/played the most ^^

Last year I discovered Lifeline and have been amazed by how a "simple" text-based game can actually convey emotions, and how the 'real time' notifications idea succeeded to add tension to the story ...
After playing a bit, I realized I was regularly checking my phone for news from Taylor (Lifeline's hero), to see what was happening to her/him : I was actually 'worrying' and relieved when she/he was finally showing up.
Of course I've already been deeply moved when reading a book, but I never thought of it in a form of a text-based game.
So I enjoyed it so much that I decided to endorse its concept (and try to make it even better of course )


Twine

We are using a tool called Twine to write the story and handle the CYOA aspect of it.
Writing with Twine is really cool, it makes it super easy to make the player navigate through the different parts of the story (they call it passages), store variables, handle conditions, add random events and all these kind of basical stuff that any game usually needs.
I discovered Twine while doing some R&D research at the very beginning of the project and immediately retained it as the basis for my project for several reasons:

• easy to use

There is a very simple pseudo-language that can be used within passages when needed, it is very intuitive and also it does not 'pollute' the writing exercise that much.
It is based on macros, and you can create any macro you'd like (in javascript), meaning that you can add almost any feature you'd like and use it directly from inside the story.  

• open source

So it can be modified to suit your needs, either by writing a plugin or tweaking the core engine (I do both ^^)

• (can be) cross-platform

What is behind Twine magic is ... hyperlinks. Twine basically builds the story into html content, meaning that it can be somehow bundled as an hybrid app to make it cross-platform.
At least that's my plan :D

I am not alone working on this project, the story is written by @Atavismus, you may already know him on this forum for his game Dustbowl.
For now, Atavismus wrote around 7000+ words and ~115 passages, which only represents a few minutes of gameplay, but this will be extended by the real time notifications system and its waiting phases on player side.
We forecast to have around 50K words once the story is complete and it should last several days.
Also there will be (we hope!) an obvious replay value by rewinding or re-starting the story and make different choices.

This is how the story looks like from Twine as of today:

And this is how it looks on mobile (we decided to stick to the sms look for now):

That's it !

For now we have a running prototype on iOS and Android with music and sounds, few settings and the ability to rewind the story to change a previous choice.
There is still a lot of work remaining and we also have other projects aside but we would like to release our game on iOS and Android before the end of the year.

We will try to build a demo asap with the beginning of the story and as much features as possible to share it with you and get feedback. If you guys are interested we will let you know when it's available.
That's it! I would love to know what you guys think of such a project
I will keep updating this post to share some news and discuss until it is released !

If you want to follow up this project on a more frequent basis, you can follow my twitter

Cheers,
Aniki

[M2M_Studios]

this really is a coincidence . I discovered twine yesterday and decided to do something like on the veins of LifeLine. I wish you all the best with your project. After doing some research I came to realize that the highest grossing games under the IF genre are lame teen novels. Ideas like these need to be spread !

[Aniki]

Thanks for your kind words M2M_Studios
I'd be glad to follow up your own Twine project when it's taking shape, please keep us posted

[Pixel Noise]

Wow this sounds like a really interesting approach, and one that takes advantage of mobile's unique capabilities. It sounds really engaging!

[Aniki]

Thank you so much @PixelNoise
That's part of the plan indeed, doing our best to use some of mobiles capabilities to create an original and unique experience !

Notifications is obviously the main one since it brings the 'real time' rhythm, which is basically the heart of this specific gameplay.   
Geolocation is something we strongly consider using as well since surveillance is one of the main topics of the game.
Generally speaking we think of sneaking a bit into the player's phone to get some of his information and use them to support the game experience 
Note that using these mobile capabilities may require player permissions, and this is another type of interaction that we want to use as part of the game

Of course, none of the player's information will ever be used other than to serve the game experience, and the game will entirely run locally anyway.
We want to denounce mass surveillance, not participate to it :D

[Christian]

Will this have more than two choices at time? I liked Lifeline for what it was, but my gripe with it and similar games is how little choices they give. They tend to feel less like a COYA/Interactive Fiction and more like moving down a checklist.

[Bricabrac]

Yay, a fellow Twine user! Good luck with your project, it sounds interesting.

[Aniki]

@Christian Yes, depending on each situation there may be 2, 3 or 4 choices.
I had the same feeling about Lifeline and having more choices is the first thing we decided to introduce in Somewhere

Interestingly @Atavismus and I recently discussed on this very topic and we were wondering what would be the best approach about the number of choices.
For now we mostly propose 3 or 4 choices rather than 2, although we can't have a specific story branch behind each choice of course and lot of choices will 'only' take the player to a specific path within the current discussion, not at the global story level. We hope that proposing 3 or 4 choices most of the time won't mislead the player and let him think that each choice will change the story.
On this regards, we don't have a 'rule' on when to propose 2 choices or more, but we are wondering whether it would be better to stick to 2 choices most of time, and only propose more choices when they really 'matter' and will have a consequence on the story.
What do you guys think ?

That being said, another point in favor of 3/4 choices vs. 2 even in 'discussion' phases is that it gives more flexibility to the player to express his opinion or feeling, which also leads to give more 'control' to the player in some way.
Moreover this is something we plan to use in order to add a 'meta' gameplay mechanic : 'marking' each choice with a specific 'tag' - such as empathy, suspicion, .. - and compute these data at the end of the game to give the player a specific 'badge' or 'trophy' (think of it as an achievement).
This player 'profile' could even be computed at some point in the game and affect the possibilities given to the player.

@Bric-à-brac Thanks for your support dear Twine fellow !
Your pseudo let me think you're francophone too, are you a fan of Gotlib's Rubrique-à-brac ?


Also, there's another gameplay element we didn't mention and that we'd love to have your thoughts about which is inducing players to do some research in order to identify the 'good' choice to make in some situations.
For instance, how should one react in front of a charging white bear : 1. Run away  2. Yell and gesticulate  3. Lie down  4. Climb a tree ?
Some folks from Canada, Norway, Russia or other nordic countries may already know the recommended behavior to have, but most players probably won't know and hence will have to do some research if they don't want to answer randomly and put Cat at risk !

[Pixel Noise]

I don't think limiting choices to 2, except when it's a major event, is exactly the right call. Could there be a non-invasive way to show when a choice is a story choice vs. other? For example - maybe you could alter the borders of the messages for story choices; make them more jagged vs. smooth. Something like that could be a subtle hint that this one is important - without limiting all the other interactions.

And regarding the concept of encouraging some quick research - the player will already be on their phone. Google is at their fingertips, so there's no reason an interested player wouldn't be able to do that, if they chose. So I think that's safe to encourage.

[Bricabrac]

@Bric-à-brac Thanks for your support dear Twine fellow !
Your pseudo let me think you're francophone too, are you a fan of Gotlib's Rubrique-à-brac ?

I'm actually Italian! Rubrique-à-brac seems interesting though.

I'm curious now, how do you cope with being a non-native English writer on Twine? Is your co-writer a native speaker?
(I personally try to write everything in English and then have a native friend proofread for me, but sometimes it feels so frustrating. It seems like I'm never good enough and aaagh why do I speak a language nobody cares about ;_;).

[Aniki]

Ha ha, my bad, I've been fooled by your pseudo ^^'

Well unfortunately no, Atavismus is not a native speaker neither :D
On our side we decided to write in french first, the reason being that we want to quickly write down what is in our mind without being disturbed by our english gaps.
Also, this is the first time we write an IF and we learn while doing it, so writing in our native language allows us to review, test, and modify it easily.

But of course at some point we'll have to get it translated in english before we can release it, and that is one of the biggest challenge we have in front of us.
Because translating ~50K words costs money, and as of today we can't afford to invest that amount of money in Somewhere.
We'll probably end up translating it ourselves and have a native proofreading it, as you do.

[DarkForestCrow]

Looks interesting.

And this application's usability is fine if we are talking about mobile devices.

Also, translation will be pain if you are using Twine especially.

[Thomas_]

Hi there!

I'm Atavismus, writer of Somewhere.
I wanted to share some news with you.
I rewrote the whole intro.

(Only the intro)

You can compare that screenshot with the previous one.
It's quite more dense and complex, ramified I would say.
In fact, to me, writing an interactive fiction is like uprooting a tree from my head.
Roots! Roots everywhere! :D

I won't spoil too much but now, the starting situation has some randomization and you have more ways to fail and succeed.
Also, I guess the rythm is more "pressing".
The story's rythm is really important to us so we work a lot on it.
Still, there is nothing like players' feedback to balance it.
So stay tuned, we'll need alpha-testers.

Looks interesting.
And this application's usability is fine if we are talking about mobile devices.
Also, translation will be pain if you are using Twine especially.

Thx DarkForestCrow!
Translation is the next point we'll deal with.
I'm sure we'll find a way.

Cya and take care guyz and gals!

[Thomas_]

Hi dear readers!

Just a few lines to tell you that the Somewhere's story is now 10 000+ words and 200+ passages.
It's still a long road, but it's a first milestone.

Our goal is something like 40 000/50 000.
It would mean a book/novel around 200-250 pages.
Ofc, that's only numbers and it's uneasy to gauge because of choices and branchs.

Anyway how does that sound to you?

Cya and take care!

Atavismus

[Bravo81]

Hey Aniki & Atavismus,

Very interesting so far, I like your references and know those titles have done very well(Not to mention their spin offs).

I thought I'd reach out and introduce my company Greenlight Games, we're creating a small portfolio of published games and I'd love to help publish yours. We don't just message every game going, we pick ones that stand out.

We've only published one title so far and that was DEUL, it came out in January as a soft release and will be hitting 1 million players this weekend.
http://www.deulgame.co.uk

If you're interested we would advertise Somewhere via social media, exhibitions & directly through DEUL. It would be great to chat more, please message me or fire me an email:
[email protected]

We've never published or developed a fiction based gamebook but do have a professional writer and director in our ranks, which may be a great mix for us both!

[Aniki]

Hi all,

it's been a long time since we didn't share news on the project !

We now have 16000 words and 300 passages
Lately we've been testing our game, over and over, mainly to improve narration and ofc in the process we discovered and fixed some bugs.

We also implemented a new gameplay that we hope players will like
I can't really tell you more about it for now but it has to do with doing research over the internet during the game in order to identify the best choices to make.
I played In Memoriam a long time back and i's been a great source of inspiration about this mechanic.
Did you play this game as well ? What are your thoughts about this idea ?

I thought I'd reach out and introduce my company Greenlight Games, we're creating a small portfolio of published games and I'd love to help publish yours. We don't just message every game going, we pick ones that stand out.

Thanks for your interest Bravo81, for now we don't plan to work with a publisher since we can't afford to share revenues. Of course this is a trade off, since a publisher could probably increase the game visiblity but this is my first project and I'd like to walk this road on my own ^^
But who knows ? We may change our mind at some point :D
In this case we'd contact you guys and discuss about it
Btw, one thing I really didn't think about before starting this project is how the hell can we communicate efficiently on our game since we don't have any image ? I would love to know your thoughts about this

Cya !

Aniki

[Thomas_]

Hi dear readers!

If you wonder, even if we are quiet, we are working hard.

The Somewhere's story is now 20 000+ words and around 400 passages.

The game has a new skin (still wip).

Tests are doing well.

You can check a picture in this tweet:

https://twitter.com/TheV1nce/status/778612414434738176

A closed demo in french is planed "soonish": we'll keep you updated.

Cya and take care!

Atavismus

[SiJaf]

I love the idea! 

I can see the different opportunities to create tension just based on the time gaps of the interactions... "Is she okay?" - "Did my advice got her in trouble?"

[Thomas_]

I love the idea!  

Thx a lot SiJaf!

"Is she okay?" - "Did my advice got her in trouble?"

That's exactly what we intend.

[Aniki]

Hi all,

here are some news on the project !
Story is now ~22K words : it represents 5 days of Cat's adventurous life, which is like... well 5 days in terms of gameplay since the game is 'real time' :D
The player receives 3 to 5 notifications per day, and each notification will end up lasting a few minutes in terms of gameplay.

Here is how it looks from Twine perspective.
We had to split the story in several files in order to have a better view, so we basically have one Twine file per day, plus a few others for some specific gameplay phases :

And here is how the game looks like as of today :

On the dev side, the main features I implemented lastly are the following :

• automatic save/reload
• checkpoints (so that players don't have to restart the story from the very beginning in case of game over)
• notifications !
• external links/apps opening
• end game screen (with an invitation to rate the game)
• debug tools
• a ton of bugs being fixed

Here is an example showing what will happen when the player reaches one of the possible endings of the game :

We also made it a bit more responsive, especially regarding the font size :

We still have a lot of fun working on this game, altough there are some hard times of course ^^
The save/reload mechanism was a bit tricky to implement, but the biggest issues I face are actually coming from the Cordova plugins I use to make this become a real mobile game.

Also, the notifications are a big step forward since this is a core aspect of the game.
This is really what makes the game 'real time', and more importantly, I think this is what makes Cat seem to be a real person.
Notifications are only implemented for 2 weeks now and it has been a great feeling the first time we tested it on mobile !

Then we realized we had to rework all the content which had been written so far to fix the 'rhythm' of the game, since the player would be notified ~15 times a day, with very short gameplay phases before Cat becomes 'busy' again. Now this is fixed
We really look forward to get feedback from players, we plan to release an alpha demo in the coming weeks, unfortunately it will only be availabe in french since the story is not translated yet

That's it for now !
Don't hesitate to comment or ask any question, I'd be more than glad to answer