Getting Started

Hello world!

My name is Megan Condis and I teach students about game design and culture at Texas Tech University.  I got my PhD in English Literature and I'm very interested in interactive narratives and digital storytelling.

I decided to spend my summer experimenting with a kind of storytelling that I have never really tried before: environmental storytelling.  Environmental storytelling asks game players to become detectives, looking around their world for clues to help them to understand the people who occupy a space or the events that took place in that space before they arrived.

To help think about how environmental storytelling works, we can refer to one well-known tool that game developers use to make their worlds feel "lived in": the environmental storytelling skeleton.  Level designer Jethro Jongeneel describes the technique thusly:

"Fallout 3 uses Environmental Storytelling that shows the history of the world to create additional backstory. This backstory is often referred to (or hinted upon) by NPCs or notes that are in the vicinity. An example of this technique can be observed in a quest where the player is told to collect an item from some skeletons in a nursery. After talking to one of these nearby NPCs, it appears that at the start of the war Mr Gibson went to find his two children. When the player finds the objective his skeleton can be found in a room hugging two smaller skeletons. Seeing the skeletons is not vital in any way but does provide additional, though optional, depth."

The technique of specifically using the artful placement of skeletons to convey information about a storyworld is sometimes memed on for being a bit too ubiquitous. 

Another great example of environmental storytelling in games can be found in the cozy game Unpacking in which the player come to learn about the life of the game's protagonist by unpacking their possessions and moving them into new living spaces whenever they enter a new stage of life. We follow the protagonist as they go away to college, move in with a romantic partner, return home after a breakup, etcetera.  The game's story unfolds as "the items that the protagonist holds on to, buys new, and throws away, change" with each move.

In my game, I wanted the player to engage with environmental storytelling not by picking through a character's possessions but by looking through the files on their computer.  I decided on a rather light-hearted, comedic tone for my game in which a high school student must hack into his teacher's computer in order to change his failing grade in a class. Along the way, the player would get to know a bit about the life of their teacher outside of school as they sift through social media posts and read emails looking for hints at what their passwords might be.  

I conceived of the game as being a bit like an digital escape room in the sense that the player would need to explore a space and solve puzzles in order to progress towards a goal within a time limit (the teacher will return from lunch soon and so the player will only have so much time to crack the computer, open up the course management software, and change their grade before getting caught). However, rather than navigating around a map of a physical space, clicking on cabinet drawers to open them and entering in padlock codes, the player would navigate the computer desk top, opening up programs and having to keep track of passwords. For example, the player might try to open their teacher's email program and be confronted with a prompt to enter a password and a button they can click if they've forgotten it. When they click the button they are given a "password hint" like "mother's maiden name."  The player must then navigate to other applications on the computer desktop to see if they can deduce the mother's maiden name from there.  Maybe there are some documents on the computer that list it? Or an instant message from a family member that could help you trace it?  Maybe looking through the teacher's search history would help?  Navigating a series of puzzles like this would eventually allow the player to figure out how to open up the program that will allow them to change their grade and escape from a fate worse than death: summer school.

The first step that I had to undertake to plan out this game was to create a flowchart of all of the puzzles that would be present within the game and location of the clues that the player would be able to find.  This was important for a couple of reasons.  First, I had to make sure that all of the puzzles could actually be solved and that the player was unable to "softlock" themselves.  For example, let's say that puzzle #1 is unlocking the teacher's social media account and I decide to put the clues to solve this puzzle hidden in an email that is sitting in the teacher's inbox.  However, the email account also has a password that the player needs to discover.  I had to make sure that I did NOT put the clue to the email password on the social media account because the player is unable to access that program before accessing the email. Instead, I had to find another place to put the email password (perhaps in a photo or a document on the computer desktop).  This kind of sequencing proved difficult to puzzle out, but using a flowchart to keep track of what information/resources the player would have access to when really helped.

Secondly, I wanted to use this flowchart as a way of easing the player into the process of puzzle solving.  Rather than allowing all of the computer's applications and programs to be available to the player at once, I wanted them to start small, having access to just one application at first and then a few more and then a few more until they are navigating the computer with ease.  This would ensure that players didn't become overwhelmed and unable to figure out where to start when they first began playing.  

In my next devlog I will talk about the engine that I am using to build this game: Tyranobuilder!