So I've started designing a new game. It's a text adventure based on the Quest engine and it's an adaptation of Montsegur 1244, my game about the fall of Montsegur in 1244 at the end of the Albigensian crusade in what is today southern France (1).
A digital game
Up until now, I have only created analog games, mostly tabletop RPGs for game conventions like Fastaval. Creating and publishing Montsegur 1244 in 2008 — 2010 was great fun.
As my kids grow older, I see a lot of good (and some not-so-good) games on the iPad. I also enjoy playing games on my smartphone. It's like the smartphone format takes everything down in size, making it a one man project to create and publish a game app. It's ok that you only play a game for a couple of hours, when you only pay 2 EUR for it. Plus you can reach a large audience.
While I enjoy pushing cardboard, dice, and meeples in the company of other people as much as any other, I'm also looking at a lot of boxes on shelves (and toys on the floor and books on shelves) and clearly seeing the advantages of digital content. Travel light, travel far.
So I've decided to create a digital game.
Quest
A few weeks ago I began looking into tools and platforms for creating games on the IPhone. Very quickly I found Quest at http://textadventures.co.uk. It is a platform for creating and running text adventures.
Quest is open source on the MIT license, which means that you keep the door open for a commercial launch. It is super easy to get started, as there is an online editor where you can create rooms and characters and start playing almost immediately. So that is what I did. The feature set and the stability were good, even if it is a bit slow to play online.
A deadline
Since moving to Stockholm, I've mostly played games with my friend Oskar when I found time for playing. Oskar will be 40 next month, and when I asked about what he wanted, he said no presents, please — or to make a donation.
So I'm thinking to publish the game by then for him to play when he is turns 40. It's a good time box. Deadlines are good to help focus on what is important.
Making hard choices
While I enjoyed puzzle games as much as any other (Day of the Tentacle, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), I don't want to create a puzzle game for my adaptation of Montsegur 1244. I don’t want players to discover a one true story about the siege, but rather have each play-through generate a story with a statement about why people choose to burn for something they believe in (quite literally in this case (2)). Essentially it is not about finding out how to do what you want but finding out what you want to do and making hard choices in a difficult situation.
Into the trenches
Obviously my ambition leads to more work as Quest aims at scripted events and interactions and now I’m heading into sandbox territory. So this weekend I took a deep dive into writing a custom library in the scripting language of Quest. My goal was to make it possible to sneak past the crusaders but only when it is dark. Something like:
> Wait until evening
You wait until evening. It gets dark.
> Sneak past guards
You sneak past the guards without a sound and escape from Montsegur.
It took a while, learning a new language and new tools, but now I got a time tracker that can keep track of when it is light and dark outside and run the commands above. Furthermore, it triggers events such that characters can go to bed when it gets dark, wake up at dawn and go find something to eat.
So what’s next? I guess I need to model relations between characters and how they influence the decisions at the end of the game.
1. My first idea was actually to create a cat petting simulator, but someone already did that.
2. Trapped inside Montsegur was more than 500 followers of the Cathar Faith. At the end of the siege, they were given the choice to repent or to burn alive. More than 200 chose death.