My game was largely created. The materials were gathered, the recordings done, the puzzle flow in place.

Now came the really fun stuff.

One of my favourite things in narrative design for games is adding in all those extra details that might not help you solve a puzzle (although that always should be the first goal), but at the very least, helps to build out the world and atmosphere. If this were a movie, these would be the little details that no one initially cares about but manages to catch on their fifth watch.

My little details were not numerous, nor particularly complex, but I am proud of them none the less. The challenge with putting these little details into a puzzle game is that you don’t want those details to become potential red herrings for your puzzles. What I could put in was limited, but it was still my favourite part of the design process.

My major plot point involved the death of Anna, and the message she left behind for her friend. I could have simply left it at the ghostly messages left on the tapes, but I wanted at least a little evidence of Anna recording that message. Not only that, but I wanted to continue to reward the thorough players who experimented with the UV light. So I coloured my fingertip with the UV marker and used that to put a ghostly fingerprint next to the record button on the tape player that would only be revealed under UV light.

I also needed to differentiate between Anna and Sarah in the written documents. Had I more time/resources/ability to not be lazy, I would have gotten a friend or family member provide additional handwriting. I was losing steam in the project though and needed to get it out the door, so it was easier for me to give Anna cursive handwriting and Sarah printed handwriting. I also eventually changed Sarah’s pen to a regular pen as opposed to a gel pen to show how she was trying to “grow up”.

I also wanted to hint at the eventual rift between Anna and Sarah as early as possible. On the first page of the ghost hunting journal, I listed Anna and Sarah’s names in Sarah’s handwriting, listing Sarah as the society secretary. However, Sarah’s name is crossed out in gel pen, implying that Anna removed her from the list. I also wrote earlier journal entries in Sarah’s handwriting, then switched to Anna’s handwriting as time went on and Sarah became less interested in their childhood hobby.

All of the tapes have a playlist of 90’s music on them. In an earlier post, I already talked about thinking of a reason for this: Anna got the tapes to record her society meetings by stealing them from her sister’s mix tape collection. This was mentioned in the script as well, but I still wanted to document how Anna’s sister felt about all this, and left a note on one of the tapes to show how Tina feels about it. Should I have done it in another handwriting? Yes. Did I? Nope.

The other major environmental detail I put in were the state of the journal pages themselves. One of the more daunting challenges I had was to figure out how to avoid writing a journal that spanned 4 years. I am a sucker for journals, but I know from experience how annoyed players can get at having to read a 50 page journal that only contains minimal useful information to their goal. Plus…it’s a LOT to write.

Luckily I had a narrative reason to keep the journal short. Sarah, having lost her best friend suddenly and tragically, would be feeling more than a little guilty and upset. I decided Anna’s mother would have given Sarah their ghost hunting tapes and materials after Anna’s death.

Grief-stricken, Sarah first tries to do an EVP recording to make contact with Anna, but feels stupid doing so. Overwhelmed by grief, Sarah decides to tear up the journal. Unsure of why she is doing so, she listens back to her tape and is shocked to hear Anna’s voice hinting at listening to the tapes. After listening to the tapes again and hearing other clues, Sarah realizes she has to go back to specific ghost hunting sessions to get the combination for the lockbox. And for that, she needs to go back to the journal she tore back.

With that reasoning in place, I tore out the majority of the pages in the journal. Once I had drafted the journal entries I was including, I decided to crumple up the paper and smooth it back out. This, I hoped, would suggest that someone had thrown out the pages only to fish them out of the trash.

Would people notice these details? Probably not. But I was proud to add them, and it was so much fun to see how I could insert more narrative clues into my props to imply what is going without outright saying it.

As I finished these details, and could finally take a look at everything together…I felt incredibly proud.

My Secret Santa finally had a chance to play it just a couple of days ago. We had some hiccups as the tape player she had turned out to not to work and after a couple of kerfuffles I ended up shipping a tape recorder direct from Amazon to her. And the feedback…was pretty great overall! She had issues with the Caesar shift card puzzle, which is what my playtesters also had issues with. But she also enjoyed the photo puzzle involving making a couple kiss by folding in the photo. The narrative seemed to resonate and she enjoyed the voice acting. It was honestly the best I could have hoped for my little game that could. I am really glad that it was enjoyed.

Is this game perfect? Not at all. Is it groundbreaking? Hardly. Is it solveable? Mostly! Which is the best I can hope for. But regardless, I created it. I created a take-home experience from scratch by myself, designing the puzzles, making the props, crafting a narrative I cared about…all of it. And I think what I ended up with is something I can be proud was accomplished.