I'm Salo M. A game Design student, and a writer. The purpose of this blog is to share my experience in a degree of Multimedia with Game Design specialization, to share the process of my first steps making games and, in general, to talk about videogames and writing.
My ko-fi page
this was the model i did for my last assignment. im p proud of it considering this time i didnt follow any guide, made everything from scratch, and modelled stuff we didn’t even see in class
i think it looks pretty cool! i didn’t have time but i want to actually finish the flipflops and add a cable to the neon lettering and maybe fix the reflections on the glass table.
(please fullview, especially to see the glass cups and the bottle im really proud of them ;u;)
Some of the scenes done for the last 3D modelling assignment ouo
First two were to practice textures
Next 3 were to practice natural daylight/moonlight/artificial light
Next one was to practice volumetric lightning
Last 2 are my custom images for this assignment. Aka me playing with the lights in the scenes without a concrete guide. Tried to turn the sunset room into a night scene and the morning daylight room into a sunset scene
this assingment was much more fun than the modelling one ;u;
Hi Gamers please crowdfund my new game it’s designed to be as difficult as possible because I know you love that shit so to beat the first boss you have to:
Interactive Narrative Assingment: A Transmedia Project
I’ve been wanting to share the second assignment I did for my Interactive Narrative class (got an A omg!). The idea was create a proposal for a transmedia project, that is, a project that spans several types of media (books, film, games, social media.etc.). The requirements were:
The first extension should be a 15 minutes short film
There should be other 3 extension, and one of them should require audience participation.
No budget limitations.
All extensions should be independent from each other. The user should be able to experience and enjoy one of them without having to know of the others.
All the extension should expand the main story. Therefore a trailer or an advertisement isn’t an appropiate extension
I decided to go for a dystopic cyberpunk story about a world where the sun has gone out and people trade in concentrated sunlight.
[read the pdf in english]
(you might recognize some f the names from Welcome to The City. I did borrow some characters from myself but they have nothing to do with the WTTC ones!)
Things that have happened: I’m studying Game Design now! I have a small game in the making! I moved to my own place! Got a job too!
Also rebranded! Star-shard Tree sounds prettier. Also look! A logo!
Will be working towards continuing Welcome to the City. I’ve had some issues regarding it but I will work towards solving them :’) Hopefully before summer.
Tonight, I talk about a storyline in Fallen London called Seeking Mr Eaten’s Name and explain why I’m eager to play it, even though it’s going to be torturous, ruinous, and above all else Not Fun… and through that I question why it is that “fun” has become the sole way many gamers judge the quality of a game.
No prior knowledge of Fallen London necessary; some spoilers of the backstory for SMEN and for one minor additional storyline.
I just came back from a conference by UMass professor Stephen Sireci about computer based testing. And the concept is really cool and accessible and the whole “test which adapts to the student” thing is… I really think it can help many students.
He also mentioned researching videogames to adapt the tests’ interface and system to be enjoyable, reduce stress and be interesting. Duolinguo for example does this.
I’m also interested in the other way round. CAT system applied to videogames. Imagine a platformer which adapts it’s difficulty to the player’s abilities. Imagine how accessible it would be to players with bad hand-eye coordination. Imagine a game which tailors battle difficulty to the player’s abilities.
Or the opposite, games like horror games tailored to cause anxiety and/or frustration on the player. Which detect what the player avoids or has trouble with and throws it back doubled.
Probably some of them exist but aahh I’m excited.
I was surprised to find out many people had liked the previous fairytale I had adapted to the world of Fallen London. And people asked in the tags to see more! So I decided to adapt another one. This one’s also a traditional Spanish fairytale, originally called “El Real del Sastre”. Enjoy!
Not so long ago, there lived a gentleman near Ladybones Road who was too opportunistic for his own good. He came from a wealthy family fallen from grace and, decided to never put his hands to filthy work, he made his way through life by lying and loans.
He didn’t have a job, he didn’t even steal. Not in the typical way, at least. But everyday he was at the store, picking up his daily meal.
“I’ll pay you next week!” he said, over and over again.
If someone pointed out that’s what he had said the previous week, he changed topic fast, and flashed a charming smile. And he kept going on like this: a charmed young butcher, a forgetful librarian, a load here, and there, and over there…
Turns out these kinds of tricks don’t work forever. And the people in the neighbourhood were getting tired of his antics. They got together to visit the Opportunistic Gentleman and ask for their money back.
Knowing he had no way to escape, he got in bed and put on his sickest face. Seeing him in this state, they decided to come back the next week.
And he continued the act. He pretended to be getting worse.
People started feeling bad for him and forgiving him his debts. The poor man looked like he was going to die any day soon! Only the Sly Seamstress kept insisting in the Echo the man owed her for mending a vest.
“But these are probably his last days!”
“Have some heart!”
“It’s just an Echo, he owed me three whole salaries!”
Yet she stood her ground. And the man knew that the only way out of this was faking his death. He got a physician friend (“I’ll return the favor next week!”) to certify his death. And dressed in a new suit, and laying in a box more comfortable than his own bed, he was taken to church.
The neighbours held vigil and talked so well of him he could almost feel himself shedding a tear.
The Sly Seamstress, however, still wasn’t convinced. This whole business smelled like a dockside market. So she hid behind a confessional just as everyone was leaving and set herself to spend the night hours there.
Turns out that a pair of thieves had recently arrived from the surface to London following promises of incredible and easy riches, though so far they had only be able to fill their pockets with mushrooms. But this had been a good night. They had stepped out of an aristocrat’s window with a bag full of echoes, jewels and wine.
They seeked sanctuary inside the church, while they basked in their findings and started dividing them.
“I’ll tell you what.” Said one of them. “If you dare cut that corpse’s head, I’ll give you my whole part.”
Greed is stronger than fear, so the other thief stood up, swallowed, and held up his dagger, decided to saw the dead man’s head like it was bread.
Seeing his grisly end near, the Opportunistic gentleman sat up, eyes rolled back, and bellowed: “Army of the dead come to me!”
The Sly Seamstress, who didn’t really want to see anyone truly dead, jumped out of the confessional screeching.
“Here we are!”
The men didn’t even have time to see her. The resuscitated man itself had been motivation enough to send them dashing into the dark street, screaming. In fact, the didn’t stop until they arrived at a warm tavern, where they had to pay for several broken ars due to their shaking hands.
It didn’t help mend their self-esteem when the group gathered around them, eager to hear a ghost story, exploded into laughter.
“Tomb colonists! Or recently deceased! I can’t believe you’ve fallen for that old prank!”
“Well that’s surfacers for you!”
A burly sailor hit one of them on the back of the head, with enough strength to make him bite his tongue.
They walked out of the tavern sulking. Maybe, if those were Tomb Colonists, or recently deceased, they could just go and get their riches back. They still had weapons and two walking corpses shouldn’t be much trouble. They made their way back much livelier. Those sailors wouldn’t be laughing when covered in mud from the carriages they would buy with that money.
Meanwhile, the Sly Seamstress was scolding the Opportunistic Gentleman, effusive finger-wagging included. But wealth has the ability of turning the worst foes into friends, and they were soon the distracted by the riches at their feet. They started dividing them, cheerfully.
Just at the same time one of the thieves was making his way towards the church door, the Sly Seamstress took a swig from the wine bottle and outstretched her hand towards the Opportunistic Gentleman.
“Now give me what belongs to me!” She joked. “One Echo!”
The thief took several steps down and started walking fast from the holy building.
“What’s the matter?” Asked his companion, following.
“League of the dead, Tomb Colonists, or whatever it’s there, I won’t deal with it. There’s so many of them they only get one Echo each!”
And all was well and all manner of thing was well.
A commission for @starbranches - portraits for the first chapter of her Twine interactive fiction, Welcome to the City. More info about it is here. It’s exciting to collaborate on a game doo-dad. In order - Dana, Carmen, and the Mayor.
Commissions are still open if anyone wants them arts!
Phew! So this is my first interactive fiction work. It’s a retrofuturistic choose-your-own-adventure game with decisions that have both immediate and high end consequences. Created with the open-source tool Twine and featuring art by the amazing @schemilix.
You are Dana. 26. You’ve always lived in The City. But don’t let the name fool you! We’ve got mountains, pastures, forests, and beaches here. Your life has been idillyc for the most part, born to loving parents, surrounded by friends. Pursuing a promising career in politics. Everything would be perfect, if it weren’t for the recurrent nightmares…
(that’s her)
What I can say so far without spoiling it, is that WTTC is a story about revolution, trust, freedom, and identity. And difficult choices.
WTTC is supposed to be an episodic adventure, which each chapter being published periodically (I’m going to strive for once a month, more often during not-many-classwork periods, more rarely during exams).
So what to expect from further chapters?
lots of lgbt+ representation
as many kinds of representation as I can, and I welcome input on how to get better at it from members of communities I don’t belong to (POC, disabled, trans.etc.)
robots
(optional) romance
(optional) polyamory
a lack of homophobia, sexism, transphobia, racism.etc. here’s a game you can play without worrying about it. (again, I appreciate input on these issues and how the lack of them is handled)
cute robots
So if that sounds up you alley:
[Play Welcome to The City for free here, no download needed!]
Hey, for a class project which I don’t know if will be greenlighted by my professor or not but:
Does anyone know of videogames with bad decisions that are clearly marked as such? Such as the SMEN branch in Fallen London where the game itself tells you that the consequences are going to be BAD so that you’re warned.
(If I remember correctly The Stanley Parable has some like this too)
(I’m talking like clear bad decisions, not foreshadowing or similar)
Thank you for your help!
Leaving a question mark so Tumblr will allow responses: ?
Good story, interesting choices, worrying representation.
I think I spent most of my time while studying for exams thinking “I can’t wait for them to end so I can finally play Life Is Strange”.
Then I binged it in two days.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing. And for most people who don’t just decide to gorge on games and their writing and who play responsibly... It will probably last you several days.
Okay, so first of all, I’m not an American. And all I know about the American college experience come’s from tv shows and 90s films... which I always thought were exaggerated, guess not!
I know it seems weird to focus on this but for me it was quite striking. I don’t really know if it’s an accurate depiction. But I was really surprised, about the existence of this Vortex Club, this elite club. I think I left the “popular vs. nerd” (or, in this case, hipster) dichotomy in High School, so I was surprised to see it in college here. As far as my experience goes, people from different “social groups” tend to get along pretty well in college. But then again, my experience is reduced to degrees like Translation and Psychology which are fairly nerdy.
This game is being used for for anti-bullying campaigns, which I think is a wonderful idea.
A bunch under the cut!
The story, the characters
Onto the game itself. When I say I binged it I’m not exaggerating, it really keeps you on edge and you can’t keep yourself from starting the next episode as soon as possible. The story is very well sewn together, though I did get confused by some of the late timetravel stuff? (Why did Max ripping the photograph apart made her end up in the dark room again?)
The characters are... very believable. I really saw my teenage self in Max and she’s the kind of character I can feel many people her age identifying with. The game does offer a great variety of stereotypical characters who aren’t stereotypes at all. Chloe did remind me of some people I had met in my life and I guess that influenced my attachment to her.
I think that relatable aspect influences the attachment to all of them. And, oh, this ends up being really important.
The time travel
I really liked this aspect! As someone who gets nervous by not being able to see all options in a choice-based game, the time travel powers palliated this. But! That didn’t mean I could just see all options, it didn’t kill replayability. Quite the opposite!
I grew confident by the fact that I could just try all immediate consequences and choose my favourite one... And didn’t take into account long-term consequences. Some of them fatal.
It’s interesting how our decision-making changes when the consequences to our choices are immediate vs. long-term.
That said, there were some choices I just didn’t seem to run across (that happens in fairly open-world stories) and I think it was an issue that the game assumed I just had chosen not to take them, or to ignore the issue. Which made me feel bad for just not noticing!
The trolley problem
The last decision. That moment when you find out the whole game has been one very complex very rich trolley problem: save the thousands of people in the city? Or save your best friend/lover?
I liked a lot that this is actually hinted at mid-game when you have to save Chloe from the train!
I personally chose Chloe and for some reason it was an easy choice for me. Probably I’m tired of narratives where queer women can’t have a happy ending. I have seen people argue about which option is more morally sound and there isn’t really a correct choice. That’s the deal about ethics dilemmas.
Also, games with decisions like these, like The Walking Dead, are already being used to teach ethics.
Representation
The game has been lauded by several people for its LGBTQA+ representation, specifically the main character being able to kiss her best friend and then writing in her diary about her conflicted feelings towards her.
There’s body type variety representation albeit not among the main characters.
There’s disabled representation, and while I thought the general treatment of it was pretty good I’m not sure about the ending of that sequence, and people have already talked about it being very problematic.
Something similar happens about racial diversity. There are characters of color but none of the main characters. Except the headmaster, I guess, but he isn’t the best example. And people have also talked about this.
So yeah, this game did try at representation. But it falls short. We can always do better.
Here’s a writing tip: LGBT+ people are not symbols
(inspired by the recent discussion at @fandomsandfeminism)
Same goes with people of color, disabled people.etc.
If you’re writing a story and it only has cis heterosexual white (male) characters... then that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bigot or a bad person! We are constantly shown these kind of stories since we were born. Honestly, it took me until I was 18 to stop saying “Women protagonists are boring!”.
BUT it does mean you have to look at your story and wonder “why”. And go back at your characters and wonder if they really all have to be cis, heterosexual and white. And wonder why your word has to be, as @fandomsandfeminism rightly put it, “a homophobe’s ideal world”.
“But my story isn’t about gay people, or being trans, or racial discrimination!”
Yeah, and my life doesn’t focus in liking girls and fearing conversion therapy and hating myself, I like metal and wearing bloomers under skirts, among other things. Yet most books with characters I can identify with insist that my life has to be full of sadness and anguish.
(This isn’t to say portraying the reality of LGBT+ youth aren’t important, the problem comes when those are the only ones allowed to be published)
Which brings me to the point: LGBT+ people, people of color, disabled people.etc. are NOT symbols. Or narrative tools.
No one asks a writer what are they trying to symbolize or explain when their main character is a cis, heterosexual, white man. Then why should it be true for other kinds of characters?
“You’re forcing writers to write token characters instead of focusing on the point they want to make!”
The thing is, we are people. Stop thinking about us as tokens and symbols. Your mighty paladin can be gay, your elven princess can be trans, your space soldier can be disabled, your story can feature nothing but people of color. And it’s just as valid and cool, and entertaining as any other story. Don’t give homophobes their ideal world.
“What if my story isn’t about fantasy and I’m trying to make a full realistic historical narrative?”
That’s so great!
Guess what: We have existed since the dawn of time.
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