Steven Kastelec
Game & Systems Designer
Necrosis
Brief Description:
Necrosis is a text-based adventure game where you play a young woman trying to solve the early murders of Jack the Ripper.
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Made in:
Twine
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My Role:
Lead Writer
Gameplay designer
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Challenges:
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Writing the script
This game also provided me with the challenge of creating a story for the game. By this point I hadn't done much writing, so things like character development and pacing were a problem. It took me almost 6 weeks to finally develop the story from the first iteration to the one used in-game. It took consultations from my team, teachers and even other students to get the story in a right place. in the end, the script came to 34 pages and 7530 words but let me tell you, there was no better feeling than watching people jump in there chairs when they played this game.
Mary. This is the main character and a example of the art style the team went with.
Credit to Sukhraj Johal for the artwork
A look at our early game loop
Sample journal page used for the player to keep track of details
Text-based Gameplay
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One of the other major problems was trying to make a game through text, similar to games like Zork. However, our game differed as we wanted the player to have a sense of exploration but still keep the player on the main path. Our team bypassed this problem by creating "boxed" environments. These environments were free to explore thereby giving an illusion of freedom when in reality, every encounter had been tailor made requiring the player to fulfill requirements before moving on. This way the player was easier to track and allowed from gameplay beats to follow story fluidly.