Skillick's Bride post-mortem

I made a short Twine game called Skillick's Bride that you can play for free on itch.io. It is a feminine Mormon horror game and is gross and disturbing, so take a look at the content warning before playing. I wanted to write a bit about my process in creating the game. 

Two years ago I found Bluebeard's Bride when I was searching for a tabletop game that focuses more on "feminine" aspects of play. I was searching for a more "feminine" tabletop game, but that simply meant having more to do with conversation and relationships than fighting. I don't think that relationships are inherently more "feminine", but hey, I needed a keyword. I felt intrigued by the game's concept and wished vaguely that someone would play it with me. This year, I was determined to make it happen and actually played the game with three of my friends. To prepare to be the "groundskeeper", I listened to some live playthroughs of the game. I haven't played very many tabletop RPGs and felt a bit lost in how to prepare myself. The handbook said to simply make stuff up on the spot, but I found that the rooms that had the best impact were ones that I had planned ahead of time. I had an idea to do a whole game focused on Mormon women's issues, but I felt like that could be too intense for my friends who have varying relationships to the church. 

Horror vs. realism

The tension of being "too intense" or "too real" is one I've noticed as I've read more horror novels. I had the hardest time liking World War Z because reading about a zombie pandemic after experiencing the  COVID-19 pandemic did not feel like a fun mind experiment. The most horrifying snippets in my head are ones that I've read on the Wikipedia pages of serial killers or in the memoirs of abuse victims. Those are things that actually hurt a little to read. I think horror should hurt a little, but be removed enough from real life to not give me obsessive thoughts. When horror is sufficiently removed and addresses an anxiety I've experienced, it gives me enough distance to feel cathartic. In writing Skillick's Bride, I wanted to experience that cathartic distance with some of my own experiences with childbearing and being a woman in the LDS Church. I've also had trouble finding horror novels that address the existential horror of childrearing.

I made the horrifying topics I wanted to address abstract to different degrees, with varying degrees of success. I think the breastfeeding room and the childbirth room may have been TOO explicit. I wonder if I could have further abstracted the horror there to help make the game more accessible. The scene where you are asked to groom a strange animal is obviously a metaphor for obligation sex. Since I felt like having a sex scene in the game would be too triggering or explicit for my audience, I felt compelled to turn it into a bizarre one. I was worried about this room being too weird, but two of my friends said that this was their favorite room. The room also has more options for actions than the other rooms. Since each room simply ends with the player's evaluation of who was responsible for the suffering experienced there, I could have had a lot more freedom in "ending" the rooms in various states, which allows for more player freedom. I didn't do this with very many rooms though, because I wanted to finish writing the game quickly.

I wanted to release the game before Halloween. This was helpful to motivate me to work on the game, but a few things were rushed at the end. In particular, the room where the group of manservants decides what room you should be in feels short and weak, as does the cellar. 

Fanfiction helps scope

It was very helpful to be writing within the context of Bluebeard's Bride because it gave my project a scope. The tabletop game explicitly addresses the suffering of women and tells you, the "groundskeeper", not to focus on why Bluebeard is the way he is or his relationship with his mother or whatever. Having Bluebeard, or in my game, Skillick, be a foil for patriarchy, helped to focus the game on the player's experience and women's issues, especially when I was tempted to make Skillick a sympathetic character. 

I should have focused further on what, exactly, I wanted Skillick to represent. After the player experiences each room, they decide whether to be "faithful" to Skillick and blame the suffering on the woman or some aspect of society, or to be "unfaithful" and blame it on Skillick or the church. I think focusing on Skillick as a representation of a perverse church--a bridegroom who was the opposite of a savior--could have helped the game feel more focused. As I wrote it, it didn't encompass all of the feelings  player might have had; maybe they wanted to be "faithful to Skillick" but not "faithful to the church". Some rooms focused more on cultural issues and some more on the character of Skillick. 

If I come back to this game to improve it, I would want to make more options available in each room and make some of the shorter rooms a little longer. I think I would change the mother's room to be a kitchen where a mother is drawing their own blood to feed to their vampire child. I would make the game more consistent about whether the servants were actually fellow ward members or not, and decide if I wanted the locations in the game to be consistent with a typical LDS chapel or not (as it is, two rooms are specific to an LDS chapel). I think I would also add a room or two.

Prototyping process

The last thing I want to talk about is my prototyping. I hadn't written a Twine game for several years, so my first priority was to make a prototype to test if I could figure out how to make different endings based on the "faithful" or "unfaithful" scores. With that technical barrier out of the way, I was able to focus on writing. I wish I had gotten feedback after writing a room or two. The Twine Discord was helpful in helping me fix my user and code errors; I'd like to see if I can find some other IF writers to trade in-progress feedback with there. I think if I hadn't been in such a rush to be done, I could have gotten more feedback from my friends and made a better game. As it is, I've proved to myself that I can make a game by myself. I have so many more ideas I want to try!

Indiecade 2015 Overview - Lots of cool games in a creative atmosphere

The best part of Indiecade is seeing games and their designers together, and seeing games you can't just download off the internet. There's a playful, creative atmosphere that I really enjoyed. My sister Andrea and I showed Our Personal Space at the gametasting on Thursday.

Andrea made the cute paper doll diorama

I got the all-access pass so I could see some of my videogame idols (? famous people in games that I like?) at the panels. I'm glad I did that, but if I go again I would just get an exhibit pass (the 3-day  all-access pass was about $500, while the exhibit pass was about $100). Many of the panelists talked off the top of their heads about admittedly interesting topics. Adam informed me that most panels are like that. But I'd rather read and essay or play a game those people spent a lot of time preparing. And if you want to spend money to get close to a writer or artist, that's what Patreon is for. So part of me thinks that panels at conventions are a weird thing that should change into something cooler. But another part of me knows that some people really love panels and it's a good way for conventions to support artists in the industry.

I wish I had been able to spend more time looking at all the games, especially the digital selects and the finalists. And the VR games! I didn't realize the lines for games would be so reasonable! All my convention experience is basically MineCon and the Salt Lake Comic Con, which were both super crowded. At those conventions, the panels were a welcome respite from the chaos of the exhibit hall. But at Indiecade, the exhibits didn't feel chaotic and stressful; they felt welcoming and accessible. So big kudos to the organizers for not overselling their convention and keeping it manageable.

We brought my 16-month-old daughter along. Adam was long-suffering and watched her most of the time. There were a few games she was able to interact with, but she's basically too young to enjoy non-tablet games (although she loves Patatap on the iPad). She liked the fountain near the Culver hotel. There weren't any changing tables in any of the restrooms, except for one in the women's restroom in the IndieXchange venue. She didn't mind having a few diaper changes next to her stroller. Luckily we were able to find a babysitter for night games!

If we can't go next year I want to do my best to replicate the experience at home. I think a party where everyone brings a laptop/phone/tablet with an indie game on it they want to share could be really fun. 

This ended up being more of a newsy post. I took photos of my notes and I want to write more about the panels I went to! I definitely have things to say about them.

One thing I've been thinking about is that sometimes I feel like I have to play ALL the games before I start trying to make (another) one. It's like I'm worried that someone else will have already made a game like the one I want to make, and I'll be rude to have made something so similar. But like the games advice presentation was saying, there's value in making games that have already been made. They help you learn about how to make games. I need to worry less about making something original and ground-breaking and more about actually making something. 

Our Personal Space is live!

I'm happy to announce that Our Personal Space is now live! Download it here for Windows, Mac, Linux, or Android. We're giving it away for free!

My sister Andrea and I started on this game when we realized we wanted to see more games that explored a married relationship, and my sister-in-law Clarissa did all the character art. I had been playing around with Ren'Py a little, and it was a great way to get something working right away. 

I'm always hesitant to experiment with coding. It's one difference I've noticed between me and experienced coders like my sister and my husband--I'm always worried I'll mess stuff up, but they're quick to experiment and see how everything works. My "coding" was limited to things like changing variables and "if-then"-type clauses. But I did feel pretty cool when something I wrote worked!

Our Personal Space is like a dating sim in that you have a romantic relationship with a fictional character. But you're married, so it's more about the little choices you make from day-to-day than the excitement of "will we kiss?" at the end of a date. Like in real long-term-relationship, you have other things you're worried about too, like how stressed you are and, in this case, if your colony on another planet will survive. When I look back on the games with dating elements I've enjoyed, many of them have other elements to worry about. Since Persona 4 is part time-management game, when you choose to spend time with someone, it feels more like you're indicating you like them somehow (although if you're playing strategically, wanting to level up a relationship has other motivations). Each month in Our Personal Space you can choose to spend time alone, which decreases your stress more, or spend time with your husband, which increases your relationship (but doesn't decrease stress as much). 

One part of Our Personal Space that we might have gone a little overboard on is on choices. The above screenshot is from a New Game+, and the options in italics are only available if you have a certain skill at a certain level. So, on a first playthrough, you might only see one of these options in italics. We wanted to make the game fun to replay, not just to get different endings, but also to see what other options are available (like if you choose to have a baby or not). It's kind of a slow build-up, but I think it's pretty fun! Please try it out, and if you do, I'd love to hear what you thought of the experience--good and bad! There's some discussion going on over on the Lemmasoft forum. Here's the trailer:

Note: Content-wise, I think this game would have a T rating. There are some parts where it's heavily implied that you and your husband are having sex, but it's not explicit. If you were reading it I'd call it a "clean" romance. So feel free to let your teenager play!

Orson Scott Card on writing in videogames.

The Orson Scott Card writing in videogames workshop was today! It went from 8:30-5:30... so it was a long day. Luckily Card is funny and engaging. The workshop was made possible from a grant a UVU faculty member applied for... so good on him!

Highlights: Card is so amazingly fun to brainstorm with. I found myself being critical of other people's ideas, whereas he ran with them to make some really interesting scenarios (see the notes for details). Maybe I need to work on brainstorming more, since turning my critical mode off would really be useful once in a while.

I'm a fan of the Ender series, so hearing an author I like talk for a while was kind of mind-blowing (authors are real people!). I admire that he's done so much on his own and how he tries to show both sides of issues, and how there isn't always a right and a wrong to a situation, which I think videogames could really use (thanks, Bioware). But then again, since combat is such a big part of so many genres, there's kind of a need for an everlasting, ever-spawning enemy, which limits the kinds of stories you can tell.

Drawbacks: Card kept complaining that he hadn't seen any awesome SF/Fantasy writing in videogames... but he's not all that into videogames. He's content to play Civilization II, which is fine, but he made a lot of generalizations about the industry that I felt weren't as accurate as they might have been ten years ago (he hadn't heard of Skyrim or Minecraft... just sayin'). He was aware of Kickstarter though, and how the publishing model is dying, so he's not completely behind the times. 

Card is a writer and as such, was pretty focused on linear storytelling in games. It's what he does best! But I'm also interested in how story and gameplay can merge. 

I've scanned in my notes below in the interest of archival-ness and maximalism. 

Proof that this actually happened

Making a videogame is... really fun.

I participated in Adventure Time Game Jam! I made a game called When Sneezles Attack. I used the engine Twine, which was really easy to work with. If you'd like to make a game in Twine, Anna Anthropy/Auntie Pixelante made an excellent tutorial (and look my game is totes on her list of sample twine games I am proud/flattered).

Writing the story was really fun. I had some ideas about how I wanted the story to go--I wanted to be able to visit parts of Ooo, I wanted to include some of the regular characters, and I wanted it to have the same kind of bizarre but sometimes logical humor I love in Adventure Time. It's much easier to imitate a style and use someone else's characters than to make my own, and that helped me write it all the faster. At first I wanted you to be Neptr and not realize it right away, and then have to find Finn and then start your quest, but I felt like that would be kind of frustrating. I liked the idea of undermining the expectation that you were playing as Finn though. Adam helped me design the story so you have a goal right away (at first it was just nebulous exploring), and he helped brainstorm a few things with me too.

After I wrote the initial story, I worked on the variables. Basically, if you ever pick up an item or return to a location, I wanted it to make a difference in the story. So the third time you visit Princess Bubblegum, she'll ask how Jake is doing (that one was actually pretty hard... but I found a way for it to work by ordering the text a non-chronological way). Whenever you get an item, the game remembers, so you can use it later on. It was my first time programming a complete game with variables, but this was an excellent place to practice that. It's like magic!

Working on the code was kind of strange... like, after I had read through the game so much I couldn't tell if it was funny or not anymore. It also felt like my brain changed from creative to complete bug-squasher. Coding also reminded me that I'm not a robot (if I were, writing <<endif>> [correct] instead of <<end if>> [incorrect, but a very common error of mine] would have been so much easier).

I feel really excited when people tell me they have played it! Especially if it made them laugh. Like, kind of giddy... is this how all game developers feel about their games? No wonder they keep making them.

I guess making this game, and seeing people enjoy it, reminded me that I can write pretty well, and given the right circumstances I can be funny too! I found it really satisfying. I recommend this experience. :-)