To understand the rest of the design process for this game, I’m going to have to actually talk about the narrative first. Because it’s me. At the same time though…this is one of the more difficult things to talk about process wise. So..SPOILERS, if you ever actually want to play the game (likely not) and for my Secret Santa.

There are a few of reasons for this. One is the very practical reason that although the basic narrative was established pretty early on, it still evolved a lot throughout the entire process, making it challenging to pinpoint in blog form how I came to the decisions I did.

Another reason is that there was a lot influencing the direction I went with the story. Especially given that I began the design process in October during one of my favourite times of year…

And yet another reason is that this narrative…evolved in a way I did not expect, and in retrospect ended up being somewhat therapeutic to me personally. I did consider not talking about this at all…but…I feel that it’s important to talk about all influences.

So, the basic story. The working title of my game is “Happy Hauntings”. At its core, it follows two best friends, Anna and Sarah. The game begins when they are 14 and begin a ghost hunting club, and end when they are 18. Although they initially share in a love of ghost hunting, their interests and personalities begin to diverge, coming to a head when Sarah, who is gaining more of an interest in more popular culture and parties, chooses to attend a party rather than do a seance as part of their ghost hunting club’s anniversary. More on the fallout of that…shortly.

I worked out pretty early how I would pace the story. As far as the audio dialogues on the cassette tapes, I would space it out over 6 tapes: 4 tapes for the main puzzles and for Anna and Sarah’s friendship arc, 1 tape for the meta puzzle clue in which Sarah alone would be present, and an epilogue tape delivered by Sarah. The tape dialogues would be no more than 2-4 minutes each, so I would have to take care getting their relationship across in a short amount of time and save anything extra for the documents and game pieces I would include.

There was a LOT influencing my narrative decisions in the game:

Ghost Stories and Hunting

Let me clear on one thing: I don’t believe in ghosts…I don’t think…but I love love LOVE ghost stories. I love the mysteries that are often at there core, I love the atmospheres they evoke from the melancholy to the terrifying, I love how they change and evolve over time and cultures.

To that end I also grew to love ghost hunting stories and the world of ghost hunting. I played adventure games created by Jonathan Boakes, who created a blog about his research into ghost hunts while designing his game. This lead me down a rabbit hole of ghost hunting gadgets and techniques and I have always wanted to create games using these tools.

Halloween and Mike Flannagan

As I mentioned before, when I was brainstorming ideas it was early October. I was well into the spooky month mood, playing ghost hunting games and watching spooky ghost Mike Flannagan shows (and listening to the haunting soundtrack to those shows). For those who haven’t seen Mike Flannagan shows, if you hate horror but love tragic characters, I would recommend pushing through because…it will wreck you.

Because I was writing a ghost story and probably because I was watching a lot of Mike Flannagan shows, it made sense that I would need a ghost in my story and, more importantly, that ghost would have to be one of my main characters. Because that’s how Mike Flannagan do.

Walking Simulators

Say what you will about their name and whether they are actually a game, but I freaking love Walking Simulators. They are a great example of environmental storytelling and I loved getting to know characters through audio recordings, documents, and stylized flashbacks. The ones that immediately jumped to mind are Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch, both fairly melancholy and bittersweet in tone.

The 90’s

Because I had chosen cassette tapes as my medium, I decided pretty early on that my game would be set in the 90’s. I am an 80’s/90’s kid, with my formative years being in the 90’s, so this was a big trip down memory lane for me. The other practical reason to set it in the 90’s was so I wouldn’t have to try and sound like a 21st century kid because I am out of touch and didn’t have time to socialize with the youths of today. Though of course there’s always universal messages and attitudes that never dies out.

Still, setting it in the 90’s but playing in the 21st century meant revisiting things that have…not aged well. I had to be mindful when writing out the script and picking songs for my playlist of what not to include while still evoking the feel of the 90’s. Most of it was obvious stuff that even when I was growing up felt…wrong to say. There was one word though that snuck in that I had not yet considered, but when it was explained to me totally made sense and I was able to adjust.

Still, revisiting my favourite 90’s tv shows, music, and trends (sparkle gel pens, anyone?!) was a ton of fun. More on that in a future post.

All of these and more influenced narrative decisions I made in the game. However, one question above all ended up driving the main direction of the narrative:

What Did I Want My Players to Feel?

At its core, my story is about friendship and the evolution it can take. I knew right from the get go I wanted to write a story of friendship. Most of my stories, come to think of it, are about friendship and how important and vital friends are to our lives. Scripts I had written in the past could best be described as comedic with heartfelt moments.

This story, however…took a different direction.

At the time I began writing the game, I was (and still am, really) at a point in my life where I have been seeing friends less often for a variety of reasons (I’m too busy, they’re too busy, kids, moving to different cities, relationships, marriage, you name it). I have been blessed enough to have a lot of great friends in my life so far, and I couldn’t help but wax nostalgic about how people come in and out of our lives, how some friends will stick around while others fade away, how that friend you were so close to a few years ago has drifted somewhat or changed enough that you find you can’t relate to them anymore. And this is especially true as we grow up from kids to teens to adults. I have a few great friends that I have been friends with since we were kids, but there are a few people I was super close to as a kid who simply outgrew me and went in a different direction. It’s very natural for this to happen! But still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad.

On top of that, it was the fifth anniversary of the passing of a dear friend of mine, and it was getting close to her birthday. I couldn’t help but reflect on that, though I wouldn’t realize it until AFTER completing the game.

So here I am writing a ghost story about two friends, and I’m watching the melancholic, bittersweet, terrifying Mike Flanagan shows, and I’m thinking about friends old and new, and before I knew what I was doing, the main arc of my story involved Anna, the lover of ghost hunting, passing away as a part of the narrative. Not just passing away, but dying tragically in a car crash.

Well…crap.

I didn’t want to write a sad story, did I? This wasn’t just sad. This was a Mack Truck of Sadness.

What kind of experience did I want to write? I tried it from other angles. But the more I tried, the more I kept coming back to the same conclusion. This was the story I wanted to write in this moment. So I decided to stick to it, and to test early enough to see how it hit.

And…yeah…it hit some testers hard. I would discuss it a lot with them, to see if I should pull back, but the general consensus was that it was perfectly okay to tell this story, but content warning was definitely a necessary thing.

When I alpha and beta tested the game, I really wanted to pay attention to how players reacted to the story. I didn’t want it to be punishing to people playing, but at the same time still felt this was the story I wanted to tell. One of my testers asked me if I was married to the idea of a car accident for the death of Anna. At the time, I said no. After all, I was open to criticism. The tester, a good friend of mine, suggested that perhaps instead of the sudden death of Anna via car crash or other means, perhaps she could have a terminal disease that slowly built its way into the narrative.

Now…in many ways, this narrative would make sense. And I seriously considered it. Hinting at a terminal disease might give some context for Anna’s interest in the occult and ghost hunting. Her insistence on the importance of the 4 year anniversary of her and Sarah’s ghost hunting club would make more sense if she knew she did not have long. The friend who suggested this is a high school teacher, and told us how teenagers who are very ill may tell their friends they are sick, but might not elaborate on how sick they are. So it might make sense that Sarah, who is Anna’s best friend and knew that she was ill, might not fully comprehend how sick Sarah actually was. And there could be hints of this. During the tapes, there could be references to a doctor’s appointment Anna might have, or have Anna coughing during a ghost hunting session, or have references to Anna’s grandmother who also passed away from the same illness.

But…the more I thought about it, and the more I tested…the more I realized that for this particular story, I had to go with my initial instinct. This was one of those examples where the alternative narrative was completely plausible and valid but…it just did not feel right for me in this instance. Although a terminal illness could have given context to Anna’s interest in ghost hunting, at the same time…I never needed an excuse to be interested in weird things. Sometimes the things we nerd out about is just because of that…because we got a sudden interest. The other more practical reason was because I did not want players to be simply waiting for the main character’s death with all the foreshadowing going on. I wanted them to focus more on the friendship in general. And of course, the more personal reason…there is a specific type of grief associated with a sudden death versus one that is being anticipated. Both are still awful to go through, but for the purposes of this story…I wanted to go with the former.

So, despite initially rewriting portions of my script, I ended up keeping the ending the same after testing it with others and getting their opinion. Again, toootally get how the other plot could have worked. But it was not the story I ended up wanting to tell.

My partner, who knows me all too well, would later tell me he saw the Mike Flannagan influences as well as that of Gone Home. And he was correct. The story I ended up telling was not a unique one. Far from it. It’s one people have heard over and over again. But…it was still the one I wanted to tell.

Toward the end of the process, as I finished up the final props and recorded my final performance, I started to feel ready to not surround myself with haunting voices, melancholy, and bittersweet grief. Part of that was that it was now the holiday season and I was actually feeling jolly now. But, at the risk of sounding cheesy and giving too much information, I also think it was because in a way, this process was therapeutic for me, and getting those feelings out in game form helped me get over them.

What did I want players to feel? I wanted them to be able to relate to these characters. I wanted the players who grew up in the 90’s to feel the nostalgia, and for those who didn’t to gain an appreciation (although I didn’t test with the younger crowd). My girlfriends who also grew up in the 90’s freaked out over some of the details I had in the game that they remember having/doing in highschool. I wanted them to feel excitement over getting to use cassette tapes.

But most importantly, I wanted them to feel what I felt, including that sense of closure and love. And I hope I actually succeeded.

But seriously, I am ready to make happy things again.