Loops and Leaps

Up and down, around and again

Hey! What is the last thing you learned?

Away from the shores of Oshovia, I took a detour down a different dock over the weekend.

Through a series of unpredictable events, I found myself reading about a game jam competition for text adventures.

Now, I’ve often wondered about this world, the shallow end of the dev pool where the written word meets more interactive media.

Every time I’ve tried to peek inside, I’ve instantly become overwhelmed. My mind doesn’t particularly like the world of discrete code with specific instructions that then never quite match the thoughts in my head.

Never mind the math.

Bottled Dreaming

I don’t know what it was, maybe the timing of having finished multiple rounds of edits and rewrites, but I decided to pick up a shovel and dig in.

Nothing spectacular, mind you, just a simple first step into a new world of storytelling.

Fueled by a distant, incredibly unlikely desire for recognition from a long-shot competition, I fiddled around and figured a few things out.

And I had a rough idea of what to play around with, drawing from a few nightmares and those surreal themes I crammed into Revification.

I wanted a narrative that folded in on itself.

Something that looped, forcing me to track where all the pieces fell.

And I wanted to use that looping mechanic as a way to play with variables that subtly shift the choices available.

Bottled Dreaming is very basic, but it does do all that!

Conversely Speaking

The game jam I mentioned is meant to focus solely on dialogue and is limited to very short experiments.

I think those are fun limitations that should be, if nothing else, an interesting learning experience.

Whatever shape the final script takes, it will certainly be more coherent than this first attempt.

Although I’m very happy with the outcome, I know full well that it’s just too surreal. But I needed that unbridled passion to get over my initial fear of becoming too overwhelmed.

Until next time,

—JMB