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Conflict & Interest

DES330 Quest Hub 2.png

High Concept

After years of conflict, the two warring nations of Edesha and Lorelia agree to a peace treaty and a diplomat from Edesha is sent to Lorelia to bring the official offer of peace, but the sudden death of Lorelia's queen results in the succession of another who is determined on seeing this war to its bitter end.

This project represents a side quest in a hypothetical RPG. Conflict & Interest was first concepted during a narrative design class and was originally made in Articy Draft. I decided to make and improve this project in Twine as I wanted it to be more interactive, much like a "choose your own adventure game."

Conflict & Interest Twine Engine.png
Conflict & Interest Twine Engine 2.png

  • Created first prototype of Articy Draft.

  • Concepted the background lore and overarching story.

  • Concepted a side quest within that world, and connected it to the overarching story.

  • Created major and minor NPCs the player would interact with.

  • Created dialogue hubs with dialogue choices to influence where the story goes as well as for roleplaying.

  • Wrote and iterated on dialogue, flavor text, descriptions, and barks.

  • Playtested, iterated, and polished project as a playable game on Twine (using Sugarcube 2.36).

Conflict & Interest Twine Game.png

Roadblocks & Challenges

Porting the initial project from Articy Draft to Twine was both a challenge and an opportunity. My original thought was to port the project to Unity, but that required building levels, player & NPC controllers, and many other systems that would slow down the development process and would not showcase the actual narrative design I intended.

Porting it to Twine instead allowed me to focus solely on the narrative design of it, not just the story, but the narrative systems such as dialogue choices, player skills inspired by RPGs, different endings, and even exploration to an extent.

It was also challenging as I did not have much experience in Twine beforehand, and learning the software took time and a lot of trial and error, and required me to scope down on some aspects to both meet a deadline, but also to focus on improving what I already had.

What I learned & Achieved

I greatly enjoyed learning to use Twine as a narrative tool. Twine gave me opportunities to craft an interactive story and immersive world thanks to its easy to use systems and even with the little JavaScript knowledge I had.

I used a Sprint development system while working on this project, meaning I created a development roadmap for each week, and every week has its own tasks I set for myself, ranked in degrees of importance.

In my experience, it was both beneficial and limiting. It was beneficial in that it allowed me to progress at a steady pace, while also feeling I was not overworking myself. However, I thought it was limiting in that I felt like the Sprint system was too rigid, that it did not allow my development of the project to be fluid enough, and it limited me creatively, and since game development is an ever-changing process, I found quite often the tasks I laid out previously were no longer applicable or worth it as I developed the project.

Conflict & Interest Twine Game 2.png

What's Next?

My plan now is to continue this project and turn it into a full fledged experience. I want to implement several side quests, but still aim to keep the overall experience smaller in scope. This will allow me to create and refine those quests into deep narrative experience rather than having too many quests that may feel too shallow.

My reason to create only side quests and not quests or narrative elements that strictly follow each other is to give the player some freedom in how they explore and tackle those narrative elements, while still making those narrative elements connected to the player's goal. These side quests I want to implement will have their own stories, but provide rewards that will ultimately help the player towards the end of the game.

For the overall experience, I thought it would be an interesting narrative decision to give the player a time limit for them to complete the game. More precisely, the player will have 7 days to gather Allies to have enough support come the 7th day. These Allies are earned as reward at the end of the side quests, and the number of Allies earned varies based on the player's choices in those side quests. I usually do not like time limits in game, but any game element can become a tool in creating engaging experiences, and that still rings true for game narrative. I think giving the player a time limit can increase the stakes of their involvement in the game world, but also encourage them to make choices they might not have done if there wasn't a time limit, and of course, it gives the player a sense of urgency which can affect their choices.

Play Conflict & Interest:

Play the Reworked Version (WIP):

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