“Well, lightly interactive, anyway.”
I’ve got something very different and kind of cool this week. I’m sharing two stories that I wrote with you! But these are different than the usual kinds of stories I post; normally, in something like that I’d just have the story slapped down at the bottom of this post, after a brief introduction. But not this time! This time around, you have to get to the story by clicking on a link. Exciting, right?
As you may have guessed, it isn’t just that the stories are on separate pages now. It’s actually that these stories are more like video games than my other short stories, in that they’re lightly interactive. You, the reader, can make choices in the story that affect how it’s told! It’s just like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, except instead of being a whole book, it’s a webpage made up entirely of dialogue. But you get to choose some of the dialogue! And I had to code it all, so it’s going on here.
Now, I have been toying with the idea of creating my own interactive web-based story/game that takes place entirely on this blog, featuring puzzles and meta-narrative and many, many links. But this is not that. This, instead, is a set of stories that I wrote to submit to a video game company I like, Inkle, for their new game, Pendragon. If you play story-driven video games, you might recognize them from 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault. They opened up the floodgates of the internet and decided to briefly accept submissions of lightly interactive campfire stories that, if chosen, would become a minor part of their upcoming game. And I figured I’d try my hand at writing some and submitting them. And you know what? That’s what these stories that I’m sharing with you are all about.
I should give some background about the stories, very briefly. The game that they were written for, Pendragon, is a, as Inkle puts it, “turn-based strategy game, where every move you make drives the narrative, and every story twist opens new gameplay opportunities.” It looks kind of like Banner Saga, except with a heavier focus on narrative gameplay and storytelling than on the battles themselves. Except, unlike Banner Saga, which takes place in a world of Norse myth, Pendragon takes place in the tales of Arthurian legend. You play as Lancelot, Guinevere, other people probably, and travel around England to rally your forces for Arthur before the last battle against Mordred. And at night, the characters tell stories around a campfire. That last part is what I’m attempting to contribute to.
So these two interactive stories, which I wrote and published in Inkle’s own special coding language and programming software made specifically for choice-based game writing, are intended to be the kinds of things that the Knights of the Round Table might tell their friends and companions as they get ready for bed in 673 A.D. Since the requirements for submission were so limited in the sense of filling a specific part of the game, I was vaguely constrained in the kind of stories I could tell. But sometimes having a rigid structure is the best way to force creativity into something. I don’t know how well it worked for me this time around, but hey, I tried. And if my stories get selected, they end up in the game, I get a free copy of it, and Inkle pays me fifty bucks. So, hell, for the chance to dip my toes in game design, why wouldn’t I try writing a story like that? I’ve already done it before, sort of.
So it seemed like a fun writing exercise, a way to practice some choice-based writing for any other project I might do, and a way to maybe make some money. Plus it also made for an easy blog post, so another bonus. So, yeah, point is, try out these two games/stories/things that I wrote! They have multiple dialogue options, some of which are locked off based on what character you’re playing as (you can just refresh the page a couple times and eventually they’ll show up), and all you have to do besides reading them is just click on the option you want. I think it’s pretty neat, and hopefully you guys think so, too.
Here’s the first story: Foggy Forest.
And here’s the second: Osbeorn The Knight.
Fingers crossed that I’ll get chosen. But if not, hey, I’m excited for the game anyway. Hopefully someone gets a kick out of these stories besides me.
