Carrina Williams

Game 201T

Postmortem

3/16/2023

Game Engine

The game engine I decided to use for my game was Twine. I chose this game engine because I have used it in a previous assignment and it was relatively easy to use. Since I have already used this engine I thought it would be easier compared to using a different one and having to learn how to do everything properly. Twine is also free to use and does not require extensive coding or coding experience. Twine is a good game engine to use for someone that is making a choice based story-telling game. I originally wanted to do something more difficult but then quickly realized that staying within my limits would allow me to be more efficient and creative. 

Initial goals

My initial goal was to create an immersive story game that is fun for me to make and for others to enjoy playing. Since I wanted to make a choice-based game I wanted there to be several different paths that lead to their own individual endings based on the player’s previous choices. I originally wanted the game to include images, but I ended up changing that after doing the tutorial. However, I still wanted the game to be immersive without the images, having something that is fun to visualize would allow the player to have their own creative experience.

My Successes 

Since I was already familiar with Twine and it is already altogether a user friendly game engine, I had an easy time doing the coding for the game. Altogether using the engine was very easy and quick.

My Difficulties

One of my difficulties was making the game feel immersive without any visual images and putting my ideas into a reality. Since this was intended to be a storytelling game I could only use mental visualization. This definitely forced me to expand my vocabulary and upgrade my use of imagery. My second difficulty involved the fact that I was using twine on the search engine instead of downloading it on my laptop. I thought that using it in the browser would be easier and would not have to take up any of my storage. It ended up running really slow and even crashed a few times. I fixed this problem by downloading Twine on my gaming PC which helped it run smoother.

What changed?

One factor that I changed in the end product was the way I wanted the layer to visualize. As I said in my original goals, I originally wanted the game to include images, but I ended up changing that factor after the tutorial. The images just didn’t give off the vibe that I wanted them to so I scrapped them as a whole. Also at one point, it felt like there was too much going on for me to keep track of everything. This made me simplify the storyline and title each section with key descriptions so that I would be able to keep track of each section. I also made a paper diagram of the story direction and what sections they belonged to.

My Takeaways 

This project helped me realize that making your ideas into a reality is actually very difficult to execute in the proper way. Another one of my takeaways is that making a good game is a long process and that I need to set up several different steps (idea creation, prototype, self play testing, changing, other people play testing, more change, etc.). My third takeaway is to be open to criticism and change for the benefit of the final product. I had a group of my friends play test the game and they gave me helpful feedback, which in turn opened my eyes to better outcomes and options for the game.