To start things off, I have narrowed down my options for a platform.

I am trying to choose between parser based IF (Inform) and hyperlink/CYOA style IF (Twine).

Each platofrm comes with it's own expectations about world building, but they also have very distinct play styles and will conjure differing expectations from the player.

If I do things in Inform, I'll be building a map first and foremost. I will then populate that map with NPCs, and objects. I can have certain events happen on timers, and have other events happen when the player is in a specific location and meets certain criteria (enough spoons, right item, specific knowledge.)

Building the game this way would be more like traditional programming. It's something I'm quasi-familiar with. Parser IF, though, carries expectations with it, and this game wouldn't meet them all

Specifically, I don't actually want to care about inventory beyond a few key items. I don't want to have to code up interactions for unexpected verb//noun combinations. I'm not looking to simulate the whole spaceship. I'm looking to tell a specific story in a way that a computer game can do better than a regular novel.

I'm worried that the traditional conventions of parser based #interactivefiction would get in my way.

OTOH, I'm not even remotely sure how I would structure this game if it was not structured around rooms.

I said that it would be "Event" structured in a previous toot. That's not exactly wrong, but I think it may carry with it a little bit of railroading, which I don't want.

I want the world to feel fairly well developed. I want the player to be able to explore. To look around. To wander.

To that end, if I build it in Twine, I'm concerned that I will lose some of the openness that I would be afforded from a parser based game.

I have no idea how a Twine NPC would work.

(Fabricationist DeWit Remakes the World has a location based topography, and an excellent NPC in it. It can be done, I just don't know how.)

So I think I've decided that, for the sake of the play style, I want this to be a hyperlink drive game.

That, to me, means that I'm working in Twine.

For the next few days, I'm going to read up on techniques for modeling locations and NPCs in Twine. If you have any thoughts on the subject, I'd love to hear them.

So, specifically, several things will happen over the course of the game:

- The player will move between locations.
- Time will pass (within a day)
- Time will pass (from one day to the next, cutting off old options, opening up new ones)

I think that I could build a roughly static (quest-style) group of passages for each day. Some passages will be, roughly, the same from day to day. Others will be very different.

In that sense, each "day" will function kind of like a minigame, and that gives me the key I need to make sure that I am able to build the game.

I will, essentially, build it one day at a time. :-)

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind when I decide to break the game in to chunks of "Days" and to have each day be roughly independent from the previous day in terms of structure (only carrying over the characters knowledge and mental state from day to day) is that this would be an excellent thing to serialize.

Publish one (or a few) days at a time. Allow players to load save files from previous days, or to start over and play from the beginning each 'day'.

@lostnbronx
I like the idea of a clue inventory of sorts. A kind of "Stuff you know" box that important facts can fall in to.

I don't intend to make the mysteries particularly time sensitive. They can be explored and understood over any number of days. (Although, based on my notes so far, a couple of them will resolve//reveal themselves regardless of what the player does.)

Have you read Mooncop by Tom Gauld?

@lostnbronx
Not remotely. It's a graphic novel that captures a lot of the emotional style that I'm reaching for.

The future as an extension of the present kind of stuff.

There are a lot of things in the game to know, as I've mapped it out so far, but it's not supposed to be hurried or rushed. My plan is to make it about relishing in the exploration and the ... the living?

The pace will come off akin to Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing. It's a place you spend time in.

@lostnbronx
Well, "smaller" might be the wrong word.

More finite. Animal Crossing lives forever. You can always go back, there is always another day.

While I suppose there's nothing stopping me from strapping some generative events in to the game, my plan for the moment is to have it end with a definite ending.