The Clock Ticks For You: The Future We Deserve

The game: https://hnguyen094.github.io/Storage/TCTFY/index.html

*Note* You should play the game before reading.

Premise

You play as a person who’s waiting out their life in two rooms: The bedroom and the living room. They live in a world where technology has developed enough to allow people to live forever; the internal conflict that the person experiences makes them believe that dying is inevitable.

Specifically, the player is taken on an emotional journey with the character, who is waiting out the last ~12 hours of their life. The space they’re in is part of a program that allows them to imagine any materialistic thing they want; hence everything at first seems perfect. The character then goes on to imagine things from their past: an armchair that reminds them of their grandfather, a clock that reminds them of their mother, and a letter that reminds them of their own family, including their wife and child. As the character bring back these items to life through their memory, the player gets a chance to evaluate the character’s own life, while unable to change any real outcome for the character; death is inevitable.

The map of the game

Learning

From Ingold’s Adventures in Text

• Using short text bursts to create a beat/rhythm to game play
• Using merging choices to avoid choice explosion
• Worked with the theme of the story: inevitability/destiny of human life
• Utilized state machines to make all choices seem natural and “matter”
• Recalling old data, similar to Firewatch
• Instead of using a +/- model of happiness, using two + variables, and then calculating happiness using part/whole technique

From The Art of Game Design

• Utilize the string in “string of pearls” approach to introduce verbs, things, and locations to player
• “Time Travel makes tragedy obsolete” — Made time travel obsolete (the undo action doesn’t undo the time that has passed) so tragedy is inevitable and isn’t dependent on choice

From the Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

Did not attempt to impose any sort of experiences that I might misrepresent

• The thoughts of the character reflect my own thoughts with logical deduction to extend out to the situation the character finds themself in
• Added content warnings at the beginning of the story

Growth

Wants

• Sense of destiny/helplessness if you replay
• Use states as variations of the same world

Brainstorming

• Story: Create a giver-like experience to create interesting verbs (like “look in color”)
• Mechanics: Create an interesting map layout so when drawn, a clue could be found
• Goal: Beauty of nature, about how tech can’t replace everything

— which eventually led to:

1. We maybe want to remove pain
2. But pain isn’t always bad
3. It reminds us we’re alive
4. So how do we make an experience such that it feels like life is “worth” living?
5. Idea: Live without pain, but fade away quietly, or die in pain but in beauty

Inform7

It’s cruel to call I7 a monster. But it’s true; there’s a battle to fight, and the monster can be tamed. Still, I found myself with these problems as I approached I7:

• Had to scope down; coming up with an experience of interesting choices might be too big a task
• Where’s the inevitability?
• Choice conflicts with a set message;
• Realization: make only 2 branches, but have them both be somehow compelling

Expanding on the idea

• A story with two branches focused around :
• staying inside, being distracted with puzzles and such, while inevitably accepting death without pain, or
• Steps off the beaten path and finds “the will to live & leave,” which allows the player to leave, experience nature, attempts to find the cure, and die outside in pain

The map I had for the game; I seriously cut down on this very soon after drawing it

Inform7 (pt2)

Two branches are 2 stories; I had a lot of bugs

• Realize that I would need to make both stories “matter”; can’t just throw away the first branch

Let the two branches represent two different things, somehow achieving the goal in both:

• an internal journey of emotional pain and exploration
• an external journey of physical pain and exploration

After playtesting #1 w/ Kesler (after writing up to where the story would split down two paths)

• Learned about “A Man called Ove” and Marjorie Prime
• Wanted to make puzzles alter the final state of the branch, arbitrarily
• Life is based on luck: added randomized values and important decisions as trivial mechanics
• Realization: would have to scope down to only one branch of the story; and I had already started the first branch
• Continued writing, focusing on the flow of emotions rather than the length of the game
• Also focused on the mechanical flow; reducing frustration with IF meant a better emotional flow

The emotional arc planned out — I did my best to stick to this

Using objects of importance/important events of the character’s life as the puzzles

• The armchair (relationship to grandfather)
• The clock (relationship to mother)
• The letter (relationship to wife and child)
• The desk (your choices)

After Playtesting #2 with (Honest) Roommate, on Halloween

• Realization that there wasn’t enough depth to allow the player to be fully invested in the character
• Due to time constraints, reevaluated what the game does well and doesn’t do well

Results

self & playtesting evaluations

Playtesters: Kesler Tanner, Joanne N (‘19), Niki S (‘20), Jia Y, Others

Gameplay

• Game play is intuitive; however, this meant that the gameplay is relatively linear
• The gameplay, due to its “linear” structure, doesn’t make obvious that the choices do in fact changes the states of the game: “life satisfaction” can increase, a relationship would change, an action would mean something different
• The mood and pacing of the game is good; a playtester said she imagined a “sepia” scene (Joanne)

Story

• Despite being short and not allowing the player to fully be invested with the character, it does give the player enough to invoke a “funny and weird feeling inside” (Kesler and Niki)
• Despite not having both branches, the emotional branch works surprisingly well on its own; The other branch could easily be added with little modification to the current story

Unintended consequences

• Due to IF’s nature to reject everything by default, those who haven’t tried IF before felt a sense of hopelessness that went along well with the theme: “It’s like the character has nothing else better to do than to wait and die, so might as well follow along” (Niki)
• Due to “sepia” mentioned before, the story felt as if it took place in the past

Room For Improvement

• Add vocabulary and synonyms so that there would be less friction between the player and the genre: “Smile” and “eat bacon” were some phrases that were typed, to no effect (Joanne); “Go to the bedroom” doesn’t work out of the box, even if there is an adjacent room named “the bedroom”; difficult for those inexperienced with IF (others)
• Add more variations to text due to choices, so the choices seem even more natural and encourage the player to read more of the text
• Add more content and depth; ties with using more variables to always create a lively story: This is already implemented a little bit; the letter content later in the game changes slightly depending on what they answered about reading analog clocks
• Add the other branch to fully complete the story and give it a “hidden,” interesting ending: Would allow the player to explore more answers to the question of “Why do we live? Why do we die?”
• Specifically add a line saying, “There is a one action left you can do; what action would end this game?” instead of what’s currently in it (might be changed by the time you read this)

Final overall impressions

I really enjoyed the process, despite being an inexperienced writer. The game, in its current state, is only highlighting emotional pain as a reason we feel that we lived. I enjoyed doing small mechanical things that means something to the story: randomized time intervals, representing the immeasurable “moments” of our lives; the constant “the clock ticks,” exaggerating the idea that we’re all waiting for our deaths; using the “Living Room” as a place that the player uses to explore what it meant for them to “live,” starting with an empty room that slowly fills up with life; and using the bed as both the beginning and end of the game, allowing the player to choose their own death. I hope that it brings the right questions to those pursuing the technology and idea of immortality and the “fountain of youth,” as well as to those who spend their time thinking about their own deaths.