a cup of words

game-writer and narrative designer, student of literature and interactive storytelling, tea-drinker, cat person, home in Vienna and Munich

[cupofwords]

Everything and nothing

...an attempt to explain the topic of my master’s thesis. About emergent narratives, cognitive narratology, perception, reception, the library of babel, house of leaves and all in all lots of info and thoughts I am not fully able to grasp yet.

I took my sweet time to define the topic for my master’s thesis. Even now, as I have researched and worked on it for a while now it seems nearly impossible to convey the concept and everything I want to write to other persons.

First I wanted to write about interactive texts in an interactive format. So my thesis itself should be interactive and enable agency. But thinking more and more about angecy in texts I slowly found even interactive texts have no true agency, as every path you’re able to choose is predetermined in the end.

I turned to emergent narratives. They appear in games where there is no pre-written narrative but instead structure with a certain system which makes it possible for narratives to emerge (for attentive recipients, that is. Otherwise there would be only some unconnected pieces of information). Random elements are shaped to stories in the mind of the player.

How to turn this concept to something I could use (or analyse) for academic purposes? How would a system for the academic counterpart of an emergent narrative work? The idea is a database which breaks an academic text into pieces and puts them together in a certain way. A human mind should then read this new randomised text, interpolates some sense out of it et voilá – an emergent insight! Theoretically.

Something like this would require a huge coding and concepting effort, a lot more than I could possibly manage for a master’s thesis. So the said database is a project for the future (maybe a PhD), and for the time being I focus on the theory around this concept. Which still feels like a lot. Recently many of the topics and thoughts related to my thesis just fell into place like puzzle pieces and it starts to look like a singular concept now instead of some random concepts thrown together.

So what’s the point? I don’t know. I’m still at the very beginning, so it’s everything and nothing at the same time.

[cupofwords]

Collecting songs for Brianna’s song-book

Brianna is a character I play in a D&D campaign we started a bit more than a year ago. She is a satyr-bard and always on the lookout for new additions in her song book. Before the beginning of the campaign the DM asked all players to provide a background of their character. So this is the story I wrote for Brianna (whose name is different in the beginning) and at the same time it has been a great and fun exercise in character creation and world building:

Once upon a time...

Berenike grows up in Parnassus, a village in the High Forest. The races of different forest creatures living there, such as elves, centaurs or, like Berenike, satyrs, see themselves as one big family. It is there a strictly organized coexistence, governed by rigid rules of the cult of Maenads. Parnassus does not appear on any usual map and is very secluded in other ways. Family members are encouraged not to leave the lands of the village because beyond its borders are only wasteland, danger, and death. Berenike does not question these rules she grew up with.

When she is about eight years old, the gnome Merxim Zidlezadle appears in Parnassus, an archaeologist who has been searching for the cult for a long time. He tells exciting stories of strange peoples and the world outside Parnassus, which most of the villagers dismiss as spinning. Berenike, however, listens and begins to wonder if Parnassus is really the whole world.

Merxim, in turn, is looking for answers, and the cultists are happy to give them to him. They give him information about their rituals and customs, which he receives and documents quite surprised. As a sign of their good will, they give him a replica of their stone altar in the form of a medallion. On it, in a seasonal circle, are depicted the most important rituals of the Maenad cult.

As Merxim prepares to leave, he is seen off with a great feast. Berenike, curious about the origin of his stories, secretly disappears from Pernassus and follows Merxim. He appreciates her keen interest and gladly accepts her as his pupil. As proof of his trust, Merxim gives her the medallion for safekeeping. For a few days the two travel during the day, and in the evenings Berenike is taught archaeology. One evening, as she wanders through the forest in search of firewood – one of the tasks of her new life – she hears muffled sounds of a fight and shortly thereafter observes the best fighter in her village frantically searching Merxim's corpse. Berenike doesn't wait to see if her disappearance has been ruled treason, which is, after all, punishable by death. She flees. The fighter follows her tracks, but soon loses them and does not go far beyond the limits of the permitted world.

Some time later, which may have seemed like weeks to Berenike, she comes upon paths that merge with more and more paths and eventually lead to Star Town. Too young to fend for herself, she is taken in by local tavern owners Caelan and Liliana Glissane – kind and warm-hearted half-elves who value honest work and expect it from their foster daughter. Berenike takes the name Brianna from then on. She wants to leave her former life behind and show belonging to her foster parents through the name.

Brianna quickly settles into Star Town. She still loves stories and they are omnipresent here: there are stories of traveling heroes, of great deeds, of love stories and all sorts of other incidents. Star Town was founded by a group of heroes, among them a great bard and storyteller who left his mark. Recipes are written down in the form of stories, all sorts of documents in the archives are told rather than factually recorded, all children's games are connected with rhymes, and for almost every occasion there is a suitable proverb.

She realizes that stories are, on the one hand, a way to experience the world and, on the other hand, to make it experienceable for others. After her time full of lies in Parnassus, she has a lot of catching up to do and a lot of stories to read. Star Town is just the place for that.

At least she was given a sense of music in Parnassus through the numerous rituals, which she also seems to have in her blood – in all the storybooks she gets her hands on here, she finds numerous illustrations of satyrs, and each of them also features a musical instrument. Caelan and Liliana recognize her potential and, in addition to kitchen duties, have her join the town band, where she is allowed to participate with a borrowed old harp.

As agents of the Harpers, Brienna's parents strive to pass on to her the values and beliefs of that organization. Soon she is included in meetings with traveling Harpers and is given the title of "Watcher".

For her 20th birthday, when Brianna is released from kitchen duties and into freedom, but must now provide for her own income, she is given her own harp by her parents (as she now refers to them). It was made by the local instrument maker, who – if it is true – was also once allowed to build an instrument for the great bard Purr.

When Brianna leaves soon after to learn stories from other regions, her parents bid her a wistful farewell, wish her luck and send her off to write her own destiny.

... since then Brianna found some new friends in her party, charms people with music, (got lost in the jungle of chult but has not died.. yet) and incorporated kobold-rock, tabaxi-street-music, orc-funeral-music, aarakocra-ballads, naga-philosophy (which is a “song” consiting of silence, as nagas are creatures older than time, thus arts won’t make sense to them) and some other songs in her music repertoire.

I also made her my new Larp-character, as playing a bard is an excellent excuse to bring my harp and of course spend some time playing it. (shoes are still missing though)

The mini in the above picture was by the way custom made on Hero Forge, which I highly recommend to anyone playing a tabletop RPG: https://www.heroforge.com/

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Horse Club Adventures 2 – Hazelwood Stories

Other than with the first part, at Horse Club Adventures 2 – Hazelwood Stories I was involved from the beginning. So I had the opportunity to work closely with other departments regarding the development of features, map, and most importantly game design regarding the pacing of the story, new mechanics, and gameplay.

Horse Club Adventures 2 was a bigger project than Horse Club Adventures and much more ambitious. Being responsible for the narrative design from the very start of the project my tasks were much less secluded and more involved into the game generally. I collaborated with game design on a daily basis to make sure the narrative and the gameplay work well together. On some parts the game designer and me had different opinions or focuses so there were lenghty discussions about some parts of the game, but neither of us would have wanted to make the game without the other and in the end both were contempt with the outcome.

My tasks in narrative design:

develope a story

develope new characters

quest design – main quest and multiple sidequests

pacing of story and gameplay

script the game in Articy

My tasks in writing:

dialogs

quest journal and task instructions

diary entries (game day summaries)

game intro/outro

names and descriptions: items, achievements, racetracks, photos

tutorials

My tasks in localisation and voice recordings

supervise of localisation in Lokalise

prepare the strings for voice recordings

export and prepare files for recordings

casting of voice actors

participate in recording sessions to answer questions about context and characters

The game will be released on october 27th this year and I hope players will see progress compared to the first Horse Club Adventures!

More info on the game image: © Wild River Games GmbH

[cupofwords]

Horse Club Adventures

In 2020 I started working with Wild River Games on Horse Club Adventures, my first major game project. It’s a cheerful riding game for kids set in the Horse Club universe, a toy line of the german manufacturer schleich.

When I joined the team the game was already in development for some time, there was a basic narrative and some dummy dialogs – so basically there were story pieces I had to sort out and rearrange into a story.

As the team on this game was rather small it was not only a writing job, but also narrative design and supervision of the localisation and voice over recordings – basically everything that had to do with the story and the texts.

My tasks in narrative design:

arranging a story out of already existing parts

developing an overarching story to connect individual story beats

quest design

scripting the game in Articy

My tasks in writing:

dialogs

quest journal and task instructions

diary entries (game day summaries)

game intro/outro

Horse Club Adventures was released in 2021 and although some players criticize the simple game play, in the end they seem to enjoy the happy and peaceful atmosphere the game creates.

More info on the game image: © Wild River Games GmbH

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Bus Simulator 21

Rather spontaneously and more or less out of no where (apart from me knowing the lead designer), I got asked to do the writing for Bus Simulator, which then became to be my first shipped game.

I joined this project quite late in the development process, so the quest design was all done and the briefing for the writing very precise and tight. My tasks were to write the mission texts which should have as few lines as possible while still being clear, define some quest NPCs including their names as well as suggestions for appearance and voice casting, and apart from that... barks. Lots of barks. Around 500 random lines spoken by random passenger NPCs on the player’s bus. 

The workflow for the mission texts was clear. Get the briefing from game design. Write texts. Get feedback. Revise texts (mostly to make them shorter). The workflow for the barks wasn’t that straightforward, as writing them cost a lot of creative energy and took longer than anticipated. It was interesting though to observe a shift of perception within me, as suddenly everything I was seeing, hearing or reading could be a source for some more barks.

More info on the game image: © stillalive studios GmbH

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Hildegard the Harpist Bard

When the stars are out ...

... and you are sitting with your friends comfortly around a campfire, it’s the right time for stories. What about the story of a bard. You might have heard that the sound of certain harps is somethin special, near otherworldly. But do you know why?

Play for free on my itch.io page!

“Hildegard the Harpist Bard” is a story I wrote on one evening for Inkles Pendragonjam, which was hosted to fill their game Pendragon with campfire stories.

The task was to tell a story, it should loosely fit into an arthurian world, and have some interactive elements to it but not necessarily a branched narrative. My story didn’t make it into the game but even so it was a nice evening with a cup of tea and making up and working out a story about a harpist.

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The devil must be viennese

Did I ever have a choice? About death? No. About your life? Yes.

This text is a piece of interactive fiction I wrote for “Sagen reloaded”, an anthology of austrian legends, retold with a modern touch to them. The anthology is in the form of printed books, so I couldn’t make the narrative too branched or complicated.

Play (in German) for free on my itch.io page!

The challenge here was to turn a traditional story into a choice-driven text. As I wanted to stick with the original plot as much as possible so the classic legend would still be recognised I had to choose a different approach than choosing a legend and splitting it up. So to add branching I kind of stitched together four viennese legends, each with a different story about a person making a pact with the devil, who eventually will get their soul (apart from one story).

The player/reader may defer the devil once, even multiple times, but in the end the devil will geht their soul, one way or another. I received feedback about this being kinda frustrating but, after all, this is the core of the whole concept.

Till now the text is available only in german, both playable on my itch.io page and readable as part of the anthology, available at Czernin Verlag. I might make a translation to english soon, though.

[cupofwords]

Children of Lumera

What’s in a dream?

Children of Lumera is a game in a dream-like world, where the Neverending Story meets the Lord of the Rings. In a classic fantastic story the protagonist, Elo, sets out to a journey which will change her and the world around her.

Telling this story has been a wish of one of the founders of Phantom Fox for quite some time. So there was already a lot of lore behind that project when the team wen’t to look for a writer and, at a GameDev Meetup in Vienna, found me.

I helped them in working on the basic narrative: structuring the existing lore into one single document, deleting obsolete info, linking events to each other, set events into a chronological order and developing new lore. At the quest design I worked out logical and temporal connections between events so the story will have a nice flow. Further I wrote some dialogs which later on served as a base for the final dialogs in the game.

It was a job where research meant to read fantastic fiction from authors like Michael Ende (I recommend the anthology “Das Gefängnis der Freiheit”, which has not been translated to English though) or Jorge Louis Borges: texts where you can never be really sure whether they are fact or fiction.

artwork: © Phantom Fox Interactive

[cupofwords]

Random Cat Generator

It creates a cat from scratch!

It’s still a text game, though. So, technically, it creates the description of a cat from scratch. But it’s still fun!

Play for free on my itch.io page!

Again a game out of a writing course. The task was to write a game about a road trip with procedurally generated content.

Me: You mean procedurally generated cats (on a road trip)?

Since I wrote this game I’m coming back to it once in a while to play it and it still makes me laugh. I just love these kinds of text created out of randomness – write a script and some text, then let the code do it’s magic.

These are parts of the ink script with variables and some game text where these variables appear.

[cupofwords]

So long, Daisy

Go home, Perceval, you’re drunk.

Just stick with Daisy, she will bring you home alright. Also, you still got a bottle of wine, so what could go wrong?

Play for free on my itch.io page!

I wrote the base of this game in the middle of the night in a frenzy kind of flow within two hours. The task here was to write a game about a knight returning home, the previous lesson about player actions, the restriction that the game should not contain a single dialog. I handed it in, happy to have made it on time. The moment the file was uploaded a thought crawled upon me... “Wait a second. Is my whole game just one big dialog?” It was accepted, though a bit reluctant, as a monolog can also be regarged as dialog, but still I got feedback and worked further on the game.

Writing this meant to come up with a lot of drunk logic, as I included a wine-variable which alters the game to be more nonsensical (or to make more sense, depending on your state of mind), and of course a lot of horsing around and writing DAISY in caps.

Cheers! 

Image © The British Library

[cupofwords]

Library

Dream or nightmare?

“Library” is another game I wrote in an online class. The task was to write a short game with only one choice space. The choice space may be part of a loop but still—a restriction which leads to carefully consideration of choices, agency, and repetition. If the choice can be looped, the game is got to be repetitive at some point. Repetitive as, say, the rooms in the library of babel or the books inside that same library.

Play for free on my itch.io page!

At this time I was also writing an essay about Borges’ Library of Babel, the website libraryofbabel.info, and procedurally generated video game worlds. As a short summary, “The Library of Babel” is a short story by Argentinian writer Jorge Louis Borges which depicts a library containing every book that was, is, or ever will be. It does so by containing every possible combination of letters in books "of four hundred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty letters which are black in color.“. The consequence is that most of these books are nonsensical compositions of random letters. The dream of the perfect library with all books inside turns into a nightmare of them books drowning in nonsense, never to be found. 

To say I quite liked the Library of Babel would be an understatement. I was obsessed. I saw the Library everywhere because, of course, the Library is everything. Of course it would be a huge overstatement to claim that I aimed for an adaptation of the Library into a game, because that’s simply not possible (Jonathan Basile, the maker of libraryofbabel.info starts his book Tar for Mortar by stating “I came to realize, after facing several difficulties in the construction of libraryofbabel.info, that I was attempting to make a faithful recreation of an impossible dream).

The concept of this game was said single choice space where one could choose to enter another room of the library, or take a book and read it. Though that shouldn’t be the only gameplay mechanic so additional to the loop and the obligatory randomness of letters in the books, I added a path by which the player would eventually find a book containing the first paragraph of The Library of Babel and scripted insanity into the game—an inevitable consequence of being in the Library over time which is depicted by everything turning slowly into gibberish as the Library and its books soak into the text of the very game.

Guide to playing the game

One could endlessly wander the library and never read a single book, in which case the game will just loop. Reading a book however opens up the core gameplay, which is the search for a book which actually makes sense. The books that can be read will always show randomly arranged letters but they will as well show a single sentence, which will lead you to the search for the book. All in all there are 15 books which will have the following hints:

Once upon a time. | There is a book. | A book that explains everything. | Some say it is a lie. | But it has to be there. | If all books are here, this one book that explains everything is here as well. | It has to be. | There are instructions. | Instructions on how to find this book. The book. | Go seven rooms further. | Then go five staircases up. | Then go three rooms into the other direction. | In this room, rumour says, there is the book of books. | Second to the left. | Now go.

Afterwards, the search for the book has started. The mentioned book of the books will then show the first paragraph of “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges. Alas, after you found such a text in this vast space full of senselessness you can’t possibly hope to find anything like it again. Which also means that wandering the library is hopeless and meaningless. Now a counter of an insanity variable will go up, which will cause the letters in the game to rearrange, matching the books of randomised letters. After wandering the library for some time, all the answers are changed to “Leave the Library” which was—after all—always possible by stepping in one of the endless airshafts.

Even if there is no end to the library, there is an end to every story, even yours. There must be. Atleast you hope. You step in one of the air shafts into an eternal fall.

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Space Geckos

Here’s a story:

Russians launched a satellite with 5 geckos to observe their mating cycles in space. After an orbit or two Russians lost connection with them. Then they reestablished it again and relaxed. Unfortunately, when the satellite landed scientists found a flaw in the insulation and 5 frozen geckos.

True story, by the way.

Now think. How would you tell the story? Which medium, what would be the focal point, who would be the hero?

Play for free on my itch.io page!

Following that first lecture, participants then had to write their own little text game in the scripting language ink with the prompt “They were never alive”. And being fascinated by these geckos I chose this small example of the pdf as a starter for my game!

“Space Geckos in the Sky” then became a lesson for me about scope, as I never finished it because it grew to be rather complicated and at some point I didn’t know how to finish it. Till now it stayed unfinished but I had loads of fun while writing and so the parts that I actually wrote work quite well.

Someday I’ll #FinishThoseGeckos !

[cupofwords]

Yarrow

Ye wanna steal my crumbling crumpet!

“Yarrow” is a short dialogue-game I wrote for an application to Larian Studios. The dialogue should take place in Rivellon, the universe of Divinity – Original Sin.

Play for free on my itch.io page!

The task came together with a bunch of writing tips from the writers at Larian, which were really great and helpful. I didn’t get the job (which is okay, for I was pretty unexperienced then but thought to just give it a shot nonetheless), but I learned a lot even from applying and I also had a great time writing this dialogue. 

Here is a short part you might encounter in a playthrough.

Druda turns her head in your general direction: “Hey, yeh talking about me? I can hear you, y‘know.“ 

You take a few steps in Druda‘s direction to try and talk to her.

The old woman stares fiercely at you, threatening you with her fists, swaying unsteadily. “You! Whadya want from me! Ye wanna steal my crumbling crumpet!“

“Don‘t worry, you can keep your crumbling crumpet. I Actually have a matching tumbling trumpet which I would trade for some yarrow flowers.“

“I don‘t need no tumbling trumpet, you hear me? What‘s a tumbling trumpet supposed to be anyway! Besides, I have plenty of them at home“, she at least seems a bit calmer now. “But ... I‘m generous and sell you some of them  flowers. You can have one for ten gold, two for thirty gold and three for seven gold. What do you say, eh?“

“Three flowers, then.“

“You really know a bargain when you see it, don‘t you? There you are. And I give you one for free as well. Now off you go, I have things to do and crumpets to crumble.“ After saying that she just stands there, gazing at stones at the ground, completely ignoring you.

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Empty Journal

Quite some time ago I got myself a writer’s journal which basically looks like a diary but with a small writing prompt for each day. To be honest, I’m not that enduring in filling the pages.  In fact not at all. 

Since autumn 2017 in which I bought it and today, spring 2020, there are like 15 entries scattered around the year. The longest streak I managed was 7 days (a whole week, not so bad after all). During writing these short texts into the journal I don’t consider them very good but as I get to read them some time later I kinda like them.  The hardest part (as one could guess) is to just write when the prompt of the day just means nothing to me. I’m thinking “Nah, I’ll just get to it later”, then of course forget about it this instant, the next day I have the feeling that I first need to write the previous day (which is, of course, exactly how this doesn’t work).  Sometimes I’m not sure about whether it really was a good decision to buy this journal when I’m not doing with it what I’m supposed to do (but rather look at it with a feeling of guilt). But I guess it’s nice after all, and if not while writing then at least reading my own small thoughts (and struggles with prompts) in hindsight. 

The thing about these texts (and maybe the reason why they seem so nice to me), is that I just wrote what I was thinking in this moment. Not specifically for others to read or for posting online, but rather personal pieces of texts. So I guess they’re just more like free writing which did turn out… quite well? Which is a kinda nice and reassuring thought to me. 

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a Link to the player

I recently finished The Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild and since then have been thinking about some little, seemingly insignificant piece of information about Link. 

Spoiler warning: if you have NOT regained the memory from the picture in Hyrule Castle (hopefully no spoiler as to the location, as I think it is quite obvious) you may not want to read further. 

What I would like to write about is however not the memory from the picture but rather something Zelda wrote in her diary, which is close to the location of the memory. (I deliberately didn’t mention the diary in the spoiler warning, as I would consider this already as some sort of spoiler…) 

Zelda wrote about Link and his character, “And still, not a word passes his lips. I never know what he's thinking!” and therefore referring to a fact we all know from the Zelda titles – Link is mute. That is, at least for the ears of the players. Later she writes “When I finally got around to asking why he's so quiet all the time, I could tell it was difficult for him to say. But he did. With so much at stake, and so many eyes upon him, he feels it necessary to stay strong and to silently bear any burden. A feeling I know all too well... For him, it has caused him to stop outwardly expressing his thoughts and feelings.” 

And now I was thinking – so now there is a reason, an innferfictional reason, why Link doesn’t say a word. I always thought that Link has to be silent for the player to identify themselves more with him. As Link doesn’t show his thoughts in the game, for the time being the players thoughts are his. This certainly is still the the case (amongst other game design-related reasons like less complicated dialogues, etc..) 

But now we have an additional innerfictional reason why Link is so silent and this very reason twists this mentioned relation between player and link. Up till now, to this diary entry, the player was Link, they can control him, they share thoughts and mind. But now… the player sort of looses this connection, the access to Link’s thoughts. 

Sure, the player could still be Link and determine Link’s thoughts and mind. This could still be the case. But. Link is silent because he is used to not showing his emotions, under this pressure, not even to the player. The player does not know about this pressure, it all starts before the game and is not even shown in the memories. This pressure is Link’s burden to bear, and so I think if the player and Link don’t share the pressure, then they also cannot share the reasons for the silence, and therefore: thoughts. 

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To study Interactive Storytelling

It was a long way but this semester (which started in October and it’s already December… oh well…) I actually started my own individual Master’s degree course at the University of Vienna. I degreed as a Bachelor in Comparative Literature (and CompLit will always be “my” institute at the university) and for Master am now studying Interactive Storytelling. 

As an individual study program has to consist of courses of already existing studies, Interactive Storytelling is a mixture of German Philology, Translation Studies, Theatre Film and Media Studies, Comparative Literature of course, a bit of Scandinavian Studies (because of the norse myths – I wanted to have some “old stories” as a textual context as well) and as well some courses of the Technical University in Vienna. 

As I was already missing going the university after I finished my Bachelor, I started a Master’s course in Comparative Literature a year ago, but hopefully can take the credit-points for my current course. That means, that I already have a bit of a head-start. But on the other hand it also means that I would not have to do any more of Comparative Literature for my individual Master any more :( 

Still, I wrote some theses, three to be exact, in this one year and I managed to choose a video-game-related topic for all of them (for which I am very grateful to the lecturers).  The first one was about H.P. Lovecraft’s texts and Frictional Games’ Amnesia – the Dark Descent, how to describe and grasp this lovecraftian atmosphere which is so typical for his texts and how the mood in Amnesia resembles it. Amnesia, though it never mentions the words “Lovecraft” or “Cthulhu” or “Old Ones”, is truly a brilliant adaptation of Lovecraft.  The other thesis I wrote in the same semester as the Lovecraft-thesis was about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Osmotic Studios’ Game Orwell. Which takes, nomen est omen, rather direct references to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Here the topic was about Big Brother and the perspective of the player in Orwell, for here you’re not under surveillance but on the contrary the one who observes. The third thesis I managed to write so far was about Jorge Louis Borges’ Library of Babel and hypertexts. The Library of Babel is a thought experiment of a library, which contains every. possible. combination. of letters, and so every book that was ever written, or is yet to be written. What sounds like a dream for book-lovers is, in fact, a nightmare. Because the main part of this library consists of nonsense. As intriguing such a library may sound, but the chance to find a book with only a single meaningful sentence is very very small. Jonathan Basile programmed a kind of digital adaptation of the library, where also every possible text is theoretically existent: libraryofbabel.info (the website seems to be not working at the moment – let’s hope it’s not down for good...)

At the moment I’m very tempted to write more about these theses, but I will rather write for each of them a separate entry before I get carried away by the library now. 

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Street Justice

So, this was a bit more fun to write than the usual thesis for my studies: my first dialogues for a game, a real, playable, gaming game. StreetJustice is a satirical game about the last police officer in Lower Austria trying to get his district under control. Or, as I like to summarise it:

Just like any other car game... but with Wurstsemmel.

The game was developed by a small team of devs and presented at the Central European Games Conference 2016 in Vienna. I had a chat with the team and we decided pretty quickly that it would be nice to work together on this project. The game was never published though, till now it’s stuck in demo, as far as I know. Nevertheless, writing the dialogues and working out characters for the demo was very much fun and I sure learned a load of things.

My tasks in this project were

structuring narration

specifying characters

writing scenes and dialogs incl. tutorials

Basic narration

I tried to put as much knowledge from my studies in it as I could and thought a lot about the narrator (are they extradiegetic or intradiegetic, how does that influence the player’s immersion), how different characters have to speak in different ways, how the protagonist or characters in general can share their thoughts with the player without “speaking to themselves”… 

in the end I settled with these traits in the narration: 

No bodiless narrator to guide the player, every text that appears in the game is set inside the game-world. All the tutorials, explanations and level summaries, as well as achievements are set inside the game-world and spoken by characters, so that the fourth wall between story and real world will never be broken. I don’t think that it’s generally a bad thing to speak directly to the player and give them instructions, but I needed a frame in which I can set the writing. Also, I kinda wanted to know if I could write this sort of thing.

Truly educational: learning the one-word-language of Austria along the way (Oida, Naja, Na, Jo, Jo eh... and so forth) – Yes, I really think the many meanings of the word “Oida” should be spread beyond the borders of Austria – see also (and very recommended): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuXR53ex4iI&frags=pl%2Cwn 

Protagonist has a dog, so he doesn’t have to speak to himself, Waldi (of course his name ist Waldi) is humanized and wears a police uniform but cannot speak, only bark, howl, and a couple of other sounds. 

These traits gave me a kind of frame, in which I had to settle the narration, which made it a lot easier to write the dialogues and think myself inside the characters.

Writing characters

The basic character traits of the protagonists and the NPCs in Street Justice were predefined, as I wasn’t in the team from the beginning. But they were really only the basic traits, and so I had lots of room, to make them more lively, more round, more …you know. So start with character creation!

Beside defining the characters aforehead, including their childhood, their motivation and their favourite food (for the protagonist it’s Schnitzel. Of course it is), I specified that the protagonist and the antagonist should not be cliché-opposites, and that the identity of the antagonist/gang-boss/Fredi should not be revealed until the very end (until then the relationship between Pauli/protagonist and Fredi should feel like Legolas & Gimli who just brag about their kills, except that there is no friendship).

These character traits won‘t neccessarily appear in game, but should communicate how the characters think or feel like and therefore be a guideline for the designers as well as the writer.

Protagonist Pauli Pauli was raised by his father as an only child in a small provincial town in Lower Austria. His mother was killed by a gang-member. He would have liked to have a “normal“ life as a post office clerk, but his father pushed him to a career at the police. Since this seemed to be his father‘s only wish, Pauli eventually started at the police. Later, however, he quite liked his job as a police officer. He knows how to use technical terms, though his dialogue partner often dicovers, that Pauli has, in fact, not a clue. He swears quite bad, but in austrian dialect. He has a dachshund called ”Waldi“ with whom he speaks often, so he does not have to talk to himself in order to inform the player about his thoughts.

Antagonist Fredi Fredi is the youngest of three viennese over-privileged children. His siblings did not care about the wishes of their parents and live at their expenses as „eternal students“ a life full of parties. So for Fredi it was quite easy to be his parents darling by studying hard and making a fast career. He thinks of himself as a cosmopolitan and likes to treat Pauli as a uneducated bumpkin. If frustrated, he gives arbitrary parking tickets or turns on his siren while he drives past pedestrians or cyclists. His goal is to work as successful as possible to eventually get a maximum pension and be able to buy a flat in Viennas first district or a holiday home on Mallorca.

Again, this is nothing that can be seen in the game, but I think it can be felt. And that’s the difference. Also, I as a writer get a feeling about them as persons, what they would do, what they would say. And with such a knowledge or “knowledge” about a person, it really seems that their dialogue lines fit to them. Also, it’s nice to have them speaking in different styles, so it doesn’t seems like it’s all spoken by the same person.

Writing scenes and dialogs

Intro Scene

This is the intro scene for Street Justice, where the player is introduced to the protagonist. As I mentioned before, the dog (Waldi, a dachshund) is here so that Pauli doens’t have to speak to himself or to the player.

Persons: Pauli and Waldi Location: Somewhere out of the city, at the side of a road

— Shot on Pauli, eating his Wurstsemmel P: You know what Waldi… Being Police officer is not that bad after all. It’s rarely stressfull, I got my breaks, my policedog, Wurstsemmeln,…

W: Raff!

P: I feel like there’s just two things I really can’t stand in this world. Someone who is picking on you…

— Shot on Waldi, being given a piece of Wurstsemmel or being pet, which is disarranging his hat

P: …and someone who makes me…

— Car is passing by, way too fast, shot on the car, loud engine sound which should startle the player as well

— Shot on Wurstsemmel in the dust

P: Drop.

P: My.

P: Food.

—Shot on Pauli’s angry face

Scene 2: getting armed

This scene is an example for a tutorial which explains the game by in-game terms, spoken by NPCs. It can be skipped, which also follows the in-game logic.

Persons: Pauli, Magistrate, Secretary, Waldi Location: starting at police department

P: Phew, just on time Waldi. This magistrate who certificates my weapons should be there at any...

M: You're late.

P: ...

M: Alright. Let's get started. I've got your weapons right here, all I need is the certificate of conformity from your car.

M: ... do I have to wait all day?

P: There it is.

S: Erm, excuse me... Pauli? Just a short moment. This nice man from the magistrate just wants to make sure that you know how to use your weapons, so please at least try to be polite, OK?

P: Mpf.

S: But... You know. Those magistrates can be... persuaded to acknowledge that you, as the head of our department can handle the weapons. Still protocol is protocol, and those people are quite picky.

P: What do you mean?

S: What I mean, is that this nice man wants his work to be done and... "earn" his money. I think 100 Schilling would do.

P: Najo... (I don't know if I want to do this, but take it into consideration)

S: In clear words Pauli, do you want to bribe the magistrate?

Yes or No

— Y:

M: I see, the documents seem to be alright and you seem to be qualified to use the weapons. There you have the certificates, I have a special trained engineer install the weapons. Just try to not use them in every situation, there's a new guideline for the usage of weapons…

P: Naaa... (No, I won't. Please, just get it to an end.)

M: Perfect. So, goodbye and make good use of the weapons.

P: Bye, then.

— N:

M: Erm.. this... eh "paper" is dog eared and the stamp is not quite on the right place. You sure this is an official document?

P: Jooo. (You're annoying as hell but I want to get through this as fast as possible)

M: ...alright. So, as an exception I will accept this but for the next time you better get a proper, CLEAN document.

P: Jo eh. (I promise you that I will, but actually I won't)

M: So. Now I will have a trained engineer install the weapons on your car.

— Shot Car on the outside on parking space, maybe there are pylons showing where the player should drive

P: OK so where are we driving to?

M: ...

P: ...you know, to test the weapons?

M: Nowhere. We are staying right here.

M: Step one on the protocol…

P: I already know how to use those.

M: STEP ONE. This should be an easy task, since the government took game controllers instead of proper steering wheels.

P: Yeah yeah, I know, but…

M: Because they are cheaper and as all the young people already know how to use a controller but can't drive at all, it's also cheaper to train the young cops with…

P: I KNOW!

W: Bark!

M: Alright, alright. So, you got your controller. Check. Transform your car with pressing [?]. The transformation is necessary because it would be against the law to drive all the time with an armed car, so the government came up with…

P: Can we just get started?

M: Oh my... yes, the weapons are approved, so time for training. Alright, as we are already transformed, we now go for shooting. So aim at those boxes and shoot with X.

P: Writing reports is more fun than this "training".

M: What do you want to say?

P: Nix. ( I have a lot to say but I know better than to speak it out loud)

M: Alright, nicely done. Now shoot at the rest of the boxes.

P: The whole parking space is full of boxes.

M: So?

P: When are we going to use the weapons on… you know… moving targets?

M: That's not in the protocol, you know that.

M: So let's get on with it. The boxes are right over there.

P: Jaja. (I know already, just leave me alone)

— Player destroying all boxes

M: Alright, that was the first part.

What now?

That’s pretty much it. I wrote more scenes and dialogs though, but this post should sum up my involvement on this game. I really would like StreetJustice to be further developed but, well, let’s see.

Artwork by StreetJustice