September Devlog: Full Episode 1 Design Finalized

Per last month's devlog, this month's primary task was to finish the narrative outline and complete game design document for the full Episode 1 release. And I'm happy to announce that this is done, I have a concrete vision to follow, and now it's a matter of ticking off boxes on the to-do list until this thang is RELEASED. I'm getting REALLY excited about this project, and feeling like it is becoming more and more tangible.

Some quick updates before getting into the details:

• I'm sure you all heard the kerfuffle about Unity; I've discussed where I'm currently at on the Tumblr blog here.
• I went to PAX West (and the Seattle Indies Expo) and talked to a ton of indie devs! I wrote about a lot of upcoming indie games on the Tumblr blog here.
• As always check the linktree (https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame) for all resources related to Amadeus. Most frequently updated are the Tumblr blog and Discord server, but these itch.io devlogs will continue monthly as well.

And now, for this month's updates. 

TL;DR--

1. PAX West & Seattle Indies Expo: more details on these events, specifically how much it helped me as a solo dev meeting and talking with other solo devs.
2. New Mechanics Envisioned: made a new paper prototype & sought playtester feedback to determine final control scheme vision.
3. Finishing the Narrative Outline: process for sitting down and mapping out the full Episode 1 narrative to guide the GDD
4. Completing the Game Design Document: process for taking the new mechanics & full narrative to fully outline the design for Episode 1
5. Recreation: media I engaged with this month for fun and inspiration!

Details below for those interested.

PAX West & Seattle Indies Expo

This was my first time attending PAX, and it was incredibly valuable. The Seattle Indies Expo (an adjacent, and completely free, event) in particular was fantastic, because I got to have really in-depth, one-on-one conversations with a lot of other small developers. So many of us are working on passion projects in our spare time, and wearing 20 different hats - from music composition to coding to project management to marketing - while also doing something else to pay the bills. So it felt very grounding to have honest discussions with so many other people who are all in the same boat. It also helped to find that a couple other developers came to the same answers I did on certain topics (virtually all of us are in agreement that you absolutely have to have deadlines that you take seriously, or you will never finish...), and one of the developers I spoke with mentioned something really helpful: that if you only have 1-2 hours to work on your game a week, decide EXACTLY WHAT you will work on in that time slot beforehand, so you've already started dedicating brain energy to the topic before the time comes.

I met a handful of developers who I'm likely to keep in touch with for the foreseeable future. It was a fantastic opportunity. Those of us out here making niche little passion projects really do feel the passion coming from each other. Gotta find your people and support each other!

I'll go ahead and plug my Amadeus blog Tumblr post on the subject again, because I'm also genuinely excited about a lot of these games: 10 Upcoming Indie Games to check out!

New Mechanics Envisioned

Never forget that busting out the sticky notes/scratch paper is an essential step in game design & development.

One of the major roadblocks I faced last month standing between me and finishing my GDD was that I knew I needed to rework the main interaction mechanic. I liked that it was WASD/point-and-click interchangeable, but it felt very unpolished. So one of my first tasks for this month was to figure out what, exactly, my vision for a polished interaction mechanic was. To do that, I revisited the very first step of game development, and made a paper prototype.

In doing this, I was able to identify the biggest source of my problem: I really like that you can control Amadeus - and not just a cursor, but this makes it impossible to interact with things that he can't get to (like looking at things in the sky). This is kind of at odds with the control scheme that seems most natural for the genre.

The central source of my problem was this:

• The most straightforward control scheme for my game seemed to be point-and-click, where you don't have an actor you control but just directly interact with environments.
• However; point-and-click mechanics are very hard on my wrists (because I have massively screwed up wrists), and I want to make a game that I can play comfortably - and for thematic reasons, this is all the more important!
• Moreover; I just really like controlling a little guy and walking around as him.

I have come up with a solution that I think works well, at least on paper. One of my big goals this month is to prototype it in-engine, and hopefully get it in front of playtesters soon. The good news is that I got a lot of feedback from playtesters that the hybrid control scheme was a plus, and almost nobody used exclusively WASD or exclusively point-and-click, which tells me that my "utilize both" design philosophy feels right. Now I just need to polish it.

My goal is still to have a rebuilt demo, containing more or less the same content as the existing demo (unless...? but let's not get our hopes up too high!) with the new mechanics and control scheme, out this Winter. So far, still on track for that!

Finishing the Narrative Outline

THIS was truly the largest obstacle between me and a complete GDD. It is not possible to list out all assets needed in a game if you don't have a list of every scene in the game, and you can't have a list of every scene in the game without a complete narrative outline. Making the demo was easy in this respect - I already knew how my story started. I also knew more or less how it would end (or at least, several key climactic events). But there is no catharsis in a climax that lacks a rich, engaging, and well-developed journey to get there. That's the meatiest part of the game, and it's what I did not have.

Truth be told, I don't know whether the journey I am writing counts as rich, engaging, and well-developed. But I've finally made it concrete, and I think it has heart. This process was actually very rewarding, because I found that in asking myself questions (what is CHARACTER doing here, how does EVENT happen) I found really fascinating answers that made the entire story much more interesting than the one I initially set out to write.

I started just by creating a document titled "Episode 1 Outline" that looked something like this:

• Intro
• Prologue
• Placeholder Scene
• Placeholder Scene
• Placeholder Scene
• Climax
• Outro

The reason I was actually able to get from that to a complete outline in less than a month is because, while it didn't really feel like it, I actually did a lot of "writing" last month. I spent the whole month watching a ton of werewolf movies and taking scribbled notes in my Amadeus brainstorming notebook, so I had a huge pool of ideas that were already swimming around in my head. This month's task wasn't to write a story I had no ideas about, it was to finally draw from all of my ideas and refine/organize them to a manageable and logical format.

Most importantly, I gave myself a deadline to finish this outline, and so the day of that deadline I sat down and looked at my intro, my climax and just thought of the "path of least resistance" to get from point A to point B that flowed well and made sense. The resulting outline is much, much shorter than I had initially envisioned (I had some utter delusions of an Umineko-length monstrosity of an introductory episode) - but it works, it tells the full story, and it's complete. And, as will be discussed in the next section, even this relatively "short" episode has so much to it that if it were any longer there's almost no way I would finish it on time.

I still don't have every single detail mapped out at this stage. That much was true for the demo as well. Many aspects of the story wrote themselves by building the game and the necessity of flavor text, signposting, etc.; so I'm leaving room for that. It is just specific enough that I know exactly what assets to make for it, and I know the purpose of each scene. This lets me write early scenes setting up to payoff in later scenes more effectively. I think it should be a good length to be engaging for the player while still letting me give it some polish. :)

Completing the Game Design Document

This was the big thing I needed to accomplish this month. I actually made solid progress on this last month, but I was unable to finish it because I didn't have a definite narrative outline, list of scenes, or finalized control scheme. Once I had these from my work this month, I was able to sit down and finish this document.

I want nothing more in the world than to share this document, because seeing it complete feels like such a massive victory. It shows that I know exactly what I'm doing and that I have solid direction for the development of Amadeus. It proves that this game is getting made. It's even color-coded!! Unfortunately, it contains absolutely GINORMOUS spoilers not just for Episode 1 but for Episodes 3, 4, and 5, which won't be out for years. So you'll just have to take my word for it.

The "Level Planning" and "Rule List" sections of this document needed the most attention, but they are also some of the most valuable for directing the full game's development.  

For the Level Planning aspect, I broke the scenes from my narrative outline down by gameplay type (point-and-click, pure dialogue, puzzle/other) and, in doing so, I found that I gave myself additional ideas for some things I wasn't sure about. Thinking about the narrative in a different way, by breaking it down into gameplay concepts, helped me make certain storytelling decisions and continue fleshing out additional narrative details. This is why I was OK leaving some things vague in my outline - I knew other aspects of development would help me fill in the blanks.

Creating the Rule List is something that, in a way, is helpful as a form of "pre-coding." It forced me to put some thought into how I will actually implement the mechanics I have been brainstorming and prototyping. I already have some ideas, and I already know at least a few edge cases/problems that are going to arise--but that means when it comes time to sit down and actually script things out, I won't be starting from scratch. I've already dedicated brainpower to considering the problem! It'll make it way easier to actually DO, since I've done the first step already.

I know I am repeating myself a lot here, but it keeps coming up because it's important. Putting thought into something before you sit down to "do" it makes it SO much easier to actually do it when that time comes. This entire month has been effectively just that for the whole game: in making this GDD, I have put thought into every aspect of the game's development, so now that I can focus on making it, it's going to be so much easier. I already know where I'm going! What a weight off of my shoulders!!

The last thing I needed to flesh out in the GDD were my asset lists and screen mockups, which there isn't much to say about that can't be inferred from the title. I'll include the mockup for a new menu/settings screen I need to create though to tease some features I hope to implement:

I also included some (annotated) screenshots of the demo to remind myself what the game actually looks like with nicely drawn assets and not mockup scribbles...

Recreation

As with last month, I want to take some time to discuss media I've engaged with this month. This is for two reasons. First, I genuinely believe that it is impossible to create good art without engaging with other art. Second, talking about media I enjoy will probably give you a feel for my tastes, which may or may not inform how likely you are to enjoy the game I'm making. Although the best measure for that is still just playing the demo and seeing for yourself!

This month I spent the majority of my time playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night with my roommate. Truthfully, I did not actually expect this to be relevant to Amadeus in any way because the genre is completely different. But I've never been happier to be wrong! The Halloween-y vibes are of course relevant as I am writing about werewolves, but I was also just so inspired by several really brilliant game design choices. This game features something that I like to call "style AS substance," and that is exactly what I want to convey in my own game. I also got a fantastic idea for something I've been brainstorming for Episode 3 thanks to this game, but I can't elaborate on that any further at this time.

Anyway, it was a fantastic game, and also fantastic inspiration. 10/10 would recommend to friends.

That's all for this month! There will be another devlog at the end of November, and now that the GDD is done, there should be a lot of development progress in that one. In the meantime, you can always bookmark the Linktree and check back for new resources.