anarchonurzox

 There are three kid kids and two teens you can talk to. 

The three kids are actually pretty happy most of the time. 

John likes bugs. Mabel likes hitting things. Pyke likes drawing and grass. They mostly hang out together near the gardening area and your interactions with them are mostly petty kid drama. They will also tell you about all the bugs that live here and who they don't like. And they'll ask lots of questions about your truck. 

The teens are a bit more skeptical. I'll work on them later...

I finished playing Pentiment and honestly that is *exactly* the kind of interlocking between the acts that I want to capture. Obviously they had a much bigger team and were able to do much more elaborate programming of the art, cutscenes, etc. But I think I can try to get a similar narrative depth in road game. I hope anyway. Some games like BG3 or whatever are just waaaay more complex. And I don't have the time to build something like undertale or stardew valley. But if I focus on a few characters and the main story, I feel like I can pull it off? We'll see. More to come.. I just need to get more writing done. 

I said yesterday that I want the town in the misty woods to feel like the PNW. To emphasize: damp, verdant, forest green, full of flowers. Like Spokane when we visited in spring: the sort of place where you wonder how they don't have moss growing on every single surface. Tallll trees, not redwoods exactly but sort of a dream equivalent. 

And the people should also be a little bit like what you'd expect from a cult in the PNW. Carmina is enticing, warm, easy to trust but a bit woo at the same time. The people dress in very natural ways... not formally like in The Village or something, but the kids are wearing smocks, linen and wool, earthy and floral tones. The Village actually isn't a terrible reference; this is not a "lesbian commune" story but it's also kiiiiinda got that vibe of having some kind of secret knowledge going on even when you're in the sunshine. (The monster isn't one of the people in the village either, not really.) 

So there's Carmina. She remembers the before time. Talked about her before. 

The priest. Edmund. He knows how to conciliate the spirit. He feeds it stories. Dreams. He makes and burns a floral incense to placate it. 

There are some NPCs here. The purpose of the NPCs is to give the protagonist a sense of the depth of what is destroyed if he doesn't "win" against the spirit. They should have really deep conversation trees... you can really get to know them. That's going to be a lot for me to flesh out... maybe you can even stay here for a while and almost become part of the community, and over time you'll unlock more and more with them. But every day you will get a warning that you are trapped here. You're not progressing the actual plot. And eventually you'll run out of time and HAVE to defeat the monster. 

 I started playing pentiment yesterday. Obviously the text and font is pretty contextual to the game itself, but I also really liked how the game used the different fonts to indicate literacy levels (and sometimes changed fonts when you learned e.g. one of the peasants could read or a monk couldn't). 

And I mentioned in the last post the way adios used greyed out text to communicate internal thoughts, things you might want to say but couldn't. 

All of these are creative ways that the medium of the game is made to serve the narrative purposes of the author/ creator. Specifically the words. For road-game I'll probably use some kind of engine, at least at first, so I don't know how much freedom I'll have to customize everything. I don't know if I need clever stuff like in pentiment and adios. But I think it's going to be important for me to consider how everything in the medium: the text, the audio, etc all need to support the theme (s) of the game. 

 You can leave Jessica at the station. She'll sleep on a couch in your boss's office. Your boss will mother hen her. You will also get told that you're delivering sunflower seeds the next day. 

Or you can have her come home with you and she'll sleep on your couch. If you cleaned the dishes in the morning she'll comment on how clean everything is. If not she'll be kinda grossed out. Either in the bosses official or in your house she'll be more open about what happened to her and why she's running.

- so why did you leave exactly? 
- I had to. They'd have stoned me. And Jacob. We... sinned. (Her voice is unsteady.) I know it was wrong but... It would have killed my baby too. I have... To protect her. Or him. It? You know. 
- I'm sorry 
- I understand why you had to run 
- I think you should go back and pay for what you did 

So that's pretty much the end of the first quest.

One thing I missed: if you don't pick up Jessica eventually she will just be... oh, I have to go! and run off. Then you just drive home. Maybe there are a few changes on the way back to make it less boring. (I'm thinking this will be point-and-click art to get from one "scene" to the next. It's like three or four "views" (and if you have Jessica there is dialogue.. if not then maybe there is an internal dialogue? maybe you stop and talk to an owl.. but it's still a bit empty)).

> and run off.
I don't know the best way to have an indication of that. I don't want to do the witcher 3 "the red bar is counting down!! choose quickly!!" mechanic; really it's just if you try to exhaust all the possible dialogue choices. Maybe she will say something in each of her responses like, "but please, it has to be soon!" and get increasingly frantic? But that still seems a little frustrating if you are doing the usual mindless (read: me) thing of going thru everything before you get to the action step. I need to think this through a little more and maybe try a few different options.

Then you get back to the station. You have a few tasks to do here:
- check in with your boss (and get munni)
- you can ask if someone here can take care of Jessica.. or if she can stay here (??)
- you can also take her home with you
-

I think of the game being mostly based around the idea of roads. I'd like (to a certain degree) build an art landscape. I've been so many crazy places: Yellowstone, Nevada, the Grand canyon, North Dakota, the redwoods, The Rockies, New Hampshire, Miami, St George Island, Fuchal... 

I want the world to feel a little bit empty (like in the Dakotas) but to be extremely rich with natural character. That doesn't necessarily mean pretty, but it can be a little weird. A little like those oversaturated photos that come up when you Google a place. 

The landscapes should have their own artistic personalities. As w/ the blind prophet... It should make you savor the details. 

Anyway, Jessica seems extremely worried, paranoid about talking to you. (I don't know how to communicate this through her speech. Something to work on.)

If you let her in the truck she just kind of hums to herself for a while, self soothing. 

You can talk to her and ask questions. 
- why are you leaving (if you ask this first you won't get a straight answer because she doesn't trust you)
- what's your name 
- where are you trying to get to? 
- how old are you? (17)

Thought, she should probably have more of a Bible name. Ruth or something offbeat like that. 

Jessica runs out in front of you. She's wearing a light blue denim jumper over black long sleeves and leggings. She has a small rip in her skirt. 

She waves you down frantically, running up to the cab as you slow down. 

"Hey Mister, can you give me a hand? I need a ride out of here." She's trying to be calm and polite but she glances back over her shoulder and seems scared. 

- sure! 
- maybe, but can you tell me why? 

I think I need to decide how the game handles "bad" decisions. Suboptimal decisions, immoral choices, stupidity. 

Some of them will lead to less ideal endings. If you don't help the girl in the first act, you don't have her around later. She just straight up dies. But you are still alive and continuing the game. But other decisions might be bigger. 

I think the only way to get the "worst" ending is by sacrificing everyone to the monster to save your own skin. But I don't know how much to "punish" players for making other choices. Maybe there's a range of different endings. I think I need more of the story completed before I decide...