So this week I made an interactive fiction game in Twine! It was quite a different experience to making games in Unity (or even Godot), but it was an enjoyable one at least. Well, it was enjoyable when I was actually working on the game and I wasn’t procrastinating.

I was actually supposed to publish Week 13, but I ended up missing a week due to serious indecision as to what I wanted to make, and quite a lot of overthinking. This happens most weeks, but usually the deadline will force me to make something very simple and kind of uninspired. I then promise myself that I’ll make something really cool instead next week, but I overthink and procrastinate and the exact same thing happens again. If I’m being honest with myself, this is what’s causing me to make games that I’m not actually pleased with.

Even though there’s a lot of great advice and tools and methodologies to design games, I find myself stuck at the very beginning when I need to just decide what I’m making. It’s only when I get close to the deadline that I start working on it, and then I end up making something extremely pared down and far from the great ideas I had at the start but I was too afraid to work on in case they’re too lofty and I’m not able to make them.

One way I try to work around this is to place limitations on myself with a theme. This kind of worked for Week 11, where the theme was simply “Water”. However, I still ended up playing around with different ideas until I settled on a very simple game that I’m honestly not proud of at all and I wouldn’t have published if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m trying to be transparent about my game making process.

The theme for this week was “Air”. Next week will be “Earth”, and then after that will be “Fire”. I had ideas for games where you’re trying to build a city in the clouds, a game where you play as a feather, and some other high concept ideas. I ended up procrastinating so much and putting so much pressure on myself that I ended up basically doing nothing last week. So this week, I decided to just get something done.

I’ve wanted to make an interactive fiction game for a while, and since I couldn’t pick a game mechanic I decided to just pick up Twine and try to make something. My initial experience with Twine was very positive, I like how easy it is to approach for someone with no coding experience, but since I’m already familiar with JavaScript/HTML/CSS I found it really powerful. I once again began to overthink the game, wanting to make an RPG combat system where you’re flying an airship around. I instead had to pare it down again, cutting most of my ideas until I got to my final version.

I think a lot of my issues with game development comes down to fear of failure and feeling that I might not be good enough. I actually used those feelings as themes when writing the story for my game this week. The story I wrote ended up kind of personal even though it’s set in a sort of fantasy world. I don’t know if other people will enjoy it, but I actually found value in making this game for myself as it let me explore some of my own feelings. To be honest, I also think that the best creative works are made when people put a bit of themselves into it, so I’m trying to do that here. I would be lying if I said it isn’t scary to put a piece of myself out there.

What went well

• I wrote a story that let me explore some of my own feelings
• I learned how to make a basic project using Twine

What could have gone better

• I procrastinated a lot.
• I ended up missing my first deadline, so I missed a week of 1 Game a Week.
• I could have decided on my game scope earlier, giving myself a framework to work on.

What I learned

• Decision paralysis and procrastination is a project killer for me. When I have a clear task I have no problem getting the work done, but without a clear scope and vision I won’t get to work.
• I can’t rely on the deadline to motivate me to make good projects. Most of the time I’ll get “something” done, but it won’t be a good project and I’ll feel demotivated and will lose faith in my own ability to make games.
• I could try restricting my scope even more. Next project’s theme is “Earth”, but maybe I can also force myself to make a game in a specific genre. I also need to find a strategy to deal with my procrastination, otherwise I’ll just continue making projects that aren’t that good.

Summary

Overall I wouldn’t consider this project a failure. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on my own work habits and to really figure out what’s blocking me from making the kind of projects I’m proud of. I don’t think it’s just self-doubt, I honestly don’t have experience in every discipline required to make a game, but maybe I can use that as a way to decide on what games I want to make? Maybe each project I can come up with new techniques I want to try and use that to guide my game design instead of getting too theoretical with the project, where I start to overthink everything. I guess I’ll see how things turn out next week.

As always, if you want to try out the game, the link is right here:

I don’t have a GitHub for the project this time around, but I do have the proof copy in case you’re interested: