The Ocean and I
A week or two before creating The Ocean and I, I had the opportunity to watch Moonlight. One of the most intimate and honest conversations took place on the ocean right underneath the beautiful moonlight. It truly inspired me, making me recognize how magical the ocean is: violent, dramatic, terrifying, but also calming, romantic, and beautiful. I started to draw a parallel between humans and the ocean and how multidimensional and deep both go. This is how I got the idea of personifying the ocean. Simultaneously, I started to think about my last couple of trips to the ocean and how horrifying it was to see trash everywhere: in the sand, in the water, and knowing it was probably contaminating the entire underwater ecosystem. It infuriated me. These two components motivated my story: exploring human emotions and climate change through an intimate conversation between a player and the ocean, hoping to convince players of leading a more intentional relationship with the ocean.
Creating this game was a very, very long and lengthy process which made me recognize you could never have enough time for this kind of project. For this IF game, I started with three alternate stories: a dystopian world about the caste system, a dystopian world where everyone was nearsighted, and finally the story behind The Ocean and I. However, as I wrote each of these stories, I found each one to become long epics which ended up getting more and more complicated. I finally reached The Ocean and I, and the story just flowed( pun intended :-)). I found myself having so much fun, finding ways to give the ocean a personality, determining how I could give the players meaningful choices which would ultimately change the ending, and providing small gimmicks to engage the player more(e.g. Letting the player leave but not letting them).
I did a couple of different playtests at different stages of creation. During the paper prototype, I actually played tested the three different story plots I had written. I quickly found that the other two games were a bit too confusing for players to understand while The Ocean and I evoked “fun-sounds” which motivated me to stick to The Ocean and I. Some feedback I got for The Ocean and I was that it was a bit challenging to understand whether the tester was talking to the ocean or another person for most of the game. Another tester emphasized how important it was to give more context on how the player got to the ocean and the relationship between the two because the game immediately jumped into the conversation. I tackled both of these issues by creating a couple of scenes before the ocean and the player talk and adding imagery to make it clear that the ocean was the one talking to the player.
The second round of playtesting I did was once I created the game on Twine. I was very happy to hear many “fun-sound” coming from players, showing me that they actually understood the game. However, one of their biggest points of feedback was that their choices didn’t feel like they mattered in the larger storyline because there was one end. I struggled with this feedback because I knew that I wanted to end the story on a negative note. I didn’t want people to leave feeling like their relationship with the ocean was perfect. I believed that it wouldn’t make it impactful. However, while I was struggling with this, Kally gave me the idea of trying to have different endings that share the same sentiment, evoking the message that nothing could undo the past. This gave me the idea of having two optional endings which led to the same sentiments. At this point, some of my playtesters pointed out some smaller bugs with how the loops worked which I ended up fixing.
A week or two before creating The Ocean and I, I had the opportunity to watch Moonlight. One of the most intimate and honest conversations took place on the ocean right underneath the beautiful moonlight. It truly inspired me, making me recognize how magical the ocean is: violent, dramatic, terrifying, but also calming, romantic, and beautiful. I started to draw a parallel between humans and the ocean and how multidimensional and deep both go. This is how I got the idea of personifying the ocean. Simultaneously, I started to think about my last couple of trips to the ocean and how horrifying it was to see trash everywhere: in the sand, in the water, and knowing it was probably contaminating the entire underwater ecosystem. It infuriated me. These two components motivated my story: exploring human emotions and climate change through an intimate conversation between a player and the ocean, hoping to convince players of leading a more intentional relationship with the ocean.
Creating this game was a very, very long and lengthy process which made me recognize you could never have enough time for this kind of project. For this IF game, I started with three alternate stories: a dystopian world about the caste system, a dystopian world where everyone was nearsighted, and finally the story behind The Ocean and I. However, as I wrote each of these stories, I found each one to become long epics which ended up getting more and more complicated. I finally reached The Ocean and I, and the story just flowed( pun intended :-)). I found myself having so much fun, finding ways to give the ocean a personality, determining how I could give the players meaningful choices which would ultimately change the ending, and providing small gimmicks to engage the player more(e.g. Letting the player leave but not letting them).
I did a couple of different playtests at different stages of creation. During the paper prototype, I actually played tested the three different story plots I had written. I quickly found that the other two games were a bit too confusing for players to understand while The Ocean and I evoked “fun-sounds” which motivated me to stick to The Ocean and I. Some feedback I got for The Ocean and I was that it was a bit challenging to understand whether the tester was talking to the ocean or another person for most of the game. Another tester emphasized how important it was to give more context on how the player got to the ocean and the relationship between the two because the game immediately jumped into the conversation. I tackled both of these issues by creating a couple of scenes before the ocean and the player talk and adding imagery to make it clear that the ocean was the one talking to the player.
The second round of playtesting I did was once I created the game on Twine. I was very happy to hear many “fun-sound” coming from players, showing me that they actually understood the game. However, one of their biggest points of feedback was that their choices didn’t feel like they mattered in the larger storyline because there was one end. I struggled with this feedback because I knew that I wanted to end the story on a negative note. I didn’t want people to leave feeling like their relationship with the ocean was perfect. I believed that it wouldn’t make it impactful. However, while I was struggling with this, Kally gave me the idea of trying to have different endings that share the same sentiment, evoking the message that nothing could undo the past. This gave me the idea of having two optional endings which led to the same sentiments. At this point, some of my playtesters pointed out some smaller bugs with how the loops worked which I ended up fixing.
I did one final round of testing which was focused more on how the player left feeling. Many of my playtesters said that they really liked the repetition of certain lines in the game. It made them feel like they were actually stuck, and they were curious to know if there were other parts of the game where I could evoke the same type of feeling. Consequently, I decided to use this one line loop in a couple of places: when explaining why the ocean loved the player, to exemplify the sheer quantity of ways that he loved the player. I also chose to add it in the portion of the story where the ocean gets angry and the waves get larger, to highlight the size of the waves.
In all honesty, I learned that creating IF is all about iteration. I think I cycled through 5 or 6 really different stories before I reached The Ocean and I see you today. It’s not only challenging to come up with a story you deeply care about, but one which also matches the scope and guidelines for the project. But I realized that if I am always in search of inspiration for a storyline, I will find an idea somewhere. I think I realized that in order to get a good idea, I should spend a lot of time intentionally thinking about how I can take different components of my life and find a way to intertwine those ideas together.
Next time, I would definitely try to stick to one story and focus on fixing it. I think that many of my previous stories were interesting and novel and could have very easily been simplified. I would have consequently had more time to play around with the actual interface and focus on the visual components of the story. Overall, I think I spent way too much time in the brainstorming phase to the point where I barely got a chance to focus on the UI sides of the game. I would also immediately start writing on Twine because I think seeing how the actual interactions happened gave me ideas on how to make the story more engaging. I would also try to use a lot more mechanics: like timer, sounds, colors, and size. I think these are all small ways to make a story seem much more engaging.
I did one final round of testing which was focused more on how the player left feeling. Many of my playtesters said that they really liked the repetition of certain lines in the game. It made them feel like they were actually stuck, and they were curious to know if there were other parts of the game where I could evoke the same type of feeling. Consequently, I decided to use this one line loop in a couple of places: when explaining why the ocean loved the player, to exemplify the sheer quantity of ways that he loved the player. I also chose to add it in the portion of the story where the ocean gets angry and the waves get larger, to highlight the size of the waves.
In all honesty, I learned that creating IF is all about iteration. I think I cycled through 5 or 6 really different stories before I reached The Ocean and I see you today. It’s not only challenging to come up with a story you deeply care about but one which also matches the scope and guidelines for the project. But I realized that if I am always in search of inspiration for a storyline, I will find an idea somewhere. I think I realized that in order to get a good idea, I should spend a lot of time intentionally thinking about how I can take different components of my life and find a way to intertwine those ideas together.
Next time, I would definitely try to stick to one story and focus on fixing it. I think that many of my previous stories were interesting and novel and could have very easily been simplified. I would have consequently had more time to play around with the actual interface and focus on the visual components of the story. Overall, I think I spent way too much time in the brainstorming phase to the point where I barely got a chance to focus on the UI sides of the game. I would also immediately start writing on Twine because I think seeing how the actual interactions happened gave me ideas on how to make the story more engaging. I would also try to use a lot more mechanics: like timer, sounds, colors, and size. I think these are all small ways to make a story seem much more engaging.
Play the game: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10lRch4E9bzNcr8wEae-vc1QyVkNyyWLu?usp=sharing
