Reflection: “The Clock Ticks for You”
This is my reflection of creating my game, The Clock Ticks for You. It’ll only take you 5–15 minutes to play through (I think), so do give it a shot!
Despite disliking Interactive Fiction as a genre, I really enjoyed the process of creating “The Clock Ticks for You.” Inform7, despite being difficult to master, offered me everything I needed to write my story and more.
For example, background variables allowed me to create a natural branching structure that varies slightly for each permutation, often long after the choices have passed. For example, by answering the question, “Do you remember how to read an analog clock?”, the player inadvertently defined the character’s relationship with their mother for the rest of the game; many turns later, due to this relationship, their wife’s letter is altered. This Inform7 structure allows for every decision to create another permutation of the story, without me having to put too much thought into it.
Because these small changes doesn’t directly reflect the player’s choices, the game-play feels natural. This was designed to reflect the choices of our (or at least my own) own lives: most of our decisions are automatic, and we live with the consequences without too much thought. Consequently, the game ended up being very linear. Originally, this would have allowed the player to explore a different narrative if they avoided the linear path.
This, however, never made it into the game due to timing constraints. Fortunately, this ended working in my favor: the player feels helpless when they do actions that are account for, but have no real effect (e.g. ‘jump’ -> ‘you jump in place’, ‘breathe’ -> “You wait, patiently. Time passes.”) This helplessness echoes the character’s own feelings.
While making the game, I had to resist (and still am resisting) the urge to make every single interaction viable, with all the synonyms and minute changes with variable-based texts. By focusing on what matters, I was able to have a playable prototype early on. I also enjoyed designing around emotions through text. For me, text turned out to be the perfect medium to do rapid prototyping when designing around emotions.
In addition, in the process of making this game, I had the chance to explore why immortality as a concept doesn’t work. At the beginning, I thought that immortality wouldn’t work because dying is a natural process: accidents happen, murders occur, etc. which led me to theme the story around the idea that “we all die” (which was the title of my game). However, as I started killing people around the character, I realized that for those deaths to matter, the character must have some emotional connection to them while they were alive. The statement that I resonated with, then, was no longer “we all eventually die,” but rather “how do we choose to live.”
My character’s life, despite all the pain and hurt, is filled with people that they loved. They choose to die because life can only be precious if it ends. The title, “The Clock Ticks for You,” retains some of the mood of the original; however, it emphasizes the limited duration of life and what happens in it, rather than than the single event that is death.
I’ve also learned about how to create good workflows, at least for Inform7 projects. Due to the buggy nature of Inform7, I realized that I was much more productive when I alternated between coding and writing, debugging little by little. I’ve also learned that I should play-test much earlier in general; I didn’t feel comfortable sharing an incomplete piece, but having more feedback would have been helpful to shape my story’s direction. Specifically, I would do this with paper prototyping, as the structure of an interactive fiction piece can definitely be represented with location-verb-story cards.
Overall, I really enjoyed the experience of creating this game. I think that the game itself isn’t where I want it to be, as the message is vague and not yet what I want to convey. When I have time, I would definitely want to expand/improve the game to truly allow the player to explore their own thoughts on the matter.
Overall, I really enjoyed the experience of creating this game. I think that the game itself isn’t where I want it to be, as the message is vague and not yet what I want to convey. When I have time, I would definitely want to expand/improve the game to truly allow the player to explore their own thoughts on the matter.
