Hi!
It's been a while, has it not? Since now and my last blog post (June 4), so much has happened: both good and bad. For the world, multitudes of natural disasters, global tensions, and the rapid downfall of old powers. For me, it's been a stressful period of college enrollment. The one source of light that's kept me sane is my partner, with whom our relationship was made official between then and now.
Naturally, the first thing we do (or, the first thing I make him do) is make a game together. I'd been wanting to create an interactive fiction / narrative game based on our then-recent graduation. Thus, over the month of June, we spent crafting and molding our latest project: Today, We March.
In this article, I just want to spend some time detailing some of the design and development processes we had to undertake during the creation of Today, We March.
One of the — perhaps the — most important difference when it comes to developing Today, We March compared to all my previous works is that it is a duo project, not a solo project. I am working on this with my partner! What sorts of changes will this dynamic make toward the game's development?
Brainstorming and Ideation
Immediately, differences were found in the brainstorming process. Normally, this would be the point where I'd produce a physical notebook from the dingy pockets of my black sling bag (which, thinking about it now, has served me for almost two years), a blue pen that I still can't write legibly with, and an unfounded determination to get something done, often after a long session of deluding myself into thinking I'm a capable game designer. However, no such thing happened this time around. Instead, the first step my partner took was to create a Google Docs document, which is like Microsoft Word if it had multi-user capabilities[1], so we could brainstorm together. How about that, eh? Brainstorming with another person. It was summer break when we began, so we couldn't meet up and discuss things in person which may have expedited the idea-communication process... but we're chronically online, so it didn't matter.
/*** [1] Microsoft Word does now support multi-user sharing, actually. One could access this feature through Microsoft SharePoint. However, I warn you now: the user experience is beyond terrible. My high school Research team used Microsoft SharePoint to work on our Research documents together, and we spent half the time working on the document and the other half fixing issues caused by the platform. ***/
In my eyes, the brainstorming phase's raison d'être is to simply get ideas on the board — to have something we developers can work with. Some may conflate the concept of brainstorming with ideation, as though one must plan out their entire game in just a few minutes. No. Brainstorming is merely the process one uses to get a project off the ground[2]. In contrast, ideation happens no matter what phase of development you're in, no matter how deep you are into a game's creation. Ideas will float into your head whether you're in the middle of making art, setting up the store page for your game, or even in the middle of shower. Ideation is always occurring. Ideation is constant.
However, while ideation is constant, ideas are never constant. That is to say, ideas are always changing. My partner and I had plenty of dialogue lines, story beats, and even characters modified or entirely scrapped because they didn't quite fit our vision (take note of the word "vision", I'll get to that). One example of how ideas change was with a scrapped character who was meant to appear post-graduation. This character's dialogue had already been completely and entirely written — dialogue about how bored she was during the ceremony and how she kept using her phone — until at some point we just... deleted her after realizing the character didn't really fit the game. Was the effort wasted? Not really. Her entire schtick of being "the bored person" was preserved in another (I argue, better) character written after. Good concepts sometimes come from retro-fixing bad ones. When you're ideating, be committed to your ideas, but don't be attached to them. Expect them to change.
/*** [2] By the way, this conception of "brainstorming" being only the initial stage of design was one I actually read from Eric Zimmerman's blog, where he detailed how he teaches game design. In it, he recommends learners to not spend too much time brainstorming and skip straight to iteration. I recommend you read Zimmerman's article yourself if you want to know more. ***/
God, this is starting to sound very much like a prescriptive blog post: one that tells you to "do this" and "do that." I would like to postface that not only am I far from qualified to tell you what to do when designing games, for I am not a professional by any measure (I'm just a rambling 18-year-old), game design is also far from a solved design subset. In other words, there is no definitive way to design a game, and all I'm telling you is what has worked for us, some of which may not necessarily work for you. Stripping away the formalese: don't quote me. Anyway, let's go back to the process descriptions.
OK remember when I mentioned "vision"?
One of the more common types of collisions my partner and I encountered between us was when we had differences in our vision for particular parts of the game. Here's an example: a key scene in Today, We March was the student's speech. I had tasked my partner to write this entire sequence as I was busy creating the artwork for the scene. However, once the script for the scene had been finished and I had seen it, I felt somewhat unsatisfied with its writing (and so did he). It was, in a word, unfitting, for a speech of that magnitude and caliber. Eventually, I decided to change some lines that he wrote — gave them more formality, more power (more "oomph" is the terminology I like to use) — and explained to him why I had done so. He then want back and edited some of my edits too afterwards.
The key challenge faced in the aforementioned speech scene is conflict of ideas. My partner had one thing imagined, I had another. It's only natural that such conflict of ideas would occur; what's important is to be able to resolve them through proper communication. It helps that my partner and I are already intimate and familiar enough with each other to make communicating an easy process, but it's also easy to imagine it breaking down between two less familiar co-workers, or even a whole 20-something team. In this regard, communication is many things: a problem, a challenge, a necessity, and a skill. It's so entirely different from a solo project wherein a developer only really communicates with themselves, not needing to take into account the perspectives of others, and, mind you, disagreements like these happened all the time during TWM's development. I can't imagine how much more I would've had to deal with had we assembled a bigger team.
Learning a New Engine
Even before a single line of narration was written for Today, We March, I knew what the core gameplay loop was already going to be like... and it's a bunch of walking. Walking and talking to people. It's like if you took an RPG and removed the combat, the fantasy, the enemies, the struggle, the progression — actually, it's like you took a game and removed the game.
OK, in all seriousness, I had been immersing myself in the world of Bitsy[3] games prior to our making of TWM, and seeing how simple those pieces of interactive fiction seemed, I thought I may have been able to make my own for a personal story I wanted to tell. After coming up with initial ideas during brainstorming, I immediately hopped on Bitsy to get acquainted. Indeed, "simple" was the case. Development was simple. However, it was by no means "easy".
/*** [3] Bitsy is a browser-based game engine used to create small, one-bit style narrative games. The stuff that comes out of Bitsy tend to have the same game mechanics; you walk around, interact with objects, pick up keys, read the text. It's fairly simple to use, and it offers plenty of flexibility (especially with the addition of Bitsy hacks). Try out Bitsy here! ***/
/*** Tangential discussion: is Bitsy a game engine? Or, I guess the more apt question is: do Bitsy games count as games? If we define games like how Jesse Schell defines them in his book The Art of Game Design, then games would be "problem-solving activities approached with a playful attitude." This is one of the loosest definitions for games I've ever seen, yet somehow it doesn't confer the label to Bitsy creations, since these don't necessarily involve problem-solving (I guess having to find the way to proceed may count?)
Another definition of games, one that arose from a lengthy discussion with my friends, is that games are closed, interactive systems with a set of rules or mechanics that allow for play. I think Bitsy games fall under this definition, though barely, only being half beneath the umbrella for "games", their backs remain half-soaked in the rain. ***/
Despite being a relatively simple tool, Bitsy still incurred a learning curve for me, one that certainly took time off development, and it's time I could've saved had I already been familiar with the tool prior. No matter! You don't learn something until you practice it after all. And practice it I had to do indeed.
Bitsy has many quirks. There are many things you can do in it, and many things (many, many things) you can't do. Limitations littered the tool wherever I went, be it in art, sound/music, world design, and even text (you know, text, narrative, story, the very thing that makes Bitsy worth using). Swerving around these limitations[4] was one hell of a challenge, and since I was really the only one on the tool — my partner only worked on writing — I had to grapple with these constraints for my desired implementations.
/*** [4] One example of a constraint is when it came to tile and sprite separation. There were a few times when I wanted to put a sprite on the same space as a tile, since sprites and tiles have different color schemes, but could not. This is actually evident when you play the game and go to the first floor of the gym, to the right, where the stairs meet the screen transition. The arrow indicating the screen transition is on the same space as what should've been a stair tile, but now it's just... The Void™. ***/
It wasn't all bad, though. Limitations certainly suck, but they also require, and thus flourish, creativity. I've certainly had to come up with silly, out-there solutions for some problems Bitsy threw at me, which I believe only enhanced the experience. For example, I wanted to put Rue's portrait into the game during the speech scene, but tiles were limited to 8x8 pixels. Due to this, I broke up Rue's portrait into 8x8 portions, made each portion a new tile, and manually placed all portions one-by-one in their respective locations. This worked (and it worked well enough), but it meant three things: (1) adding the portrait was tedious, (2) moving the portrait even by a pixel would've meant a do-over from the start, and (3) I ended up with 60+ more tile designs than I started with. It was rough, but in the end, I got it done.
Funny anecdote about Bitsy weirdness: I had wanted to add music to the game all throughout its entire development, and figuring that I could simply find music online and paste it into the project, I put the act off until the very end. Imagine my surprise when I find out you... cannot "add" music to Bitsy. In fact, if you want music in your Bitsy project, you must compose it entirely within Bitsy (which is such a bad idea, and I couldn't even get it to work, but I applaud the effort and sheer balls to add such a system to a browser-based tool). Devoid of hope, I decided to simply forgo music. Thankfully, ON THE DAY we were meant to publish TWM, I had found out about Bitsy hacks along with one such hack (called Bitsy Muse) that ADDS MUSIC TO BITSY GAMES. Needless to say, I was scrambling to get the hack to work, and with enough luck and wrench-smacking, Today, We March was fitted with glamorous background music during key moments, elevating their emotional effect. If you're one of my friends who told me you cried to the game, you can thank my procrastinating July 4 ass on crunch time, baby!
Unc Still Got Art Skills
Do you know about the meme "Unc still got it🙏😭"? It features a man doing jump rope while sitting down, with the caption "Unc still got it 🙏😭". The GIF is often used to compliment someone who still possesses the ability to perform something, usually in spite of their inactivity.
Yeah. That's how I felt opening up Aseprite again after months of not using it, solely to make the art for Today, We March. The game was made somewhat linearly, so I drew the art for the rooms and tiles as they were needed. I'm rather proud of my artwork on the game, especially considering my rustiness. Turns out, unc really still got it.
/*** [5] For those wondering about the large number of frames, I drew each room in an individual Aseprite frame. There are also the various iterations of Rue's portrait... which count as rooms in the game. It's one of the many... outside-the-box things I had to do to get stuff to work. ***/
Writing — For Me, For You, For Us
Reading text, listening to characters and narration, immersing oneself with the world, is the crux of the experience in Today, We March. Getting the writing right was imperative, so it was the "step" on which my partner and I spent the most time working (Note: while the structure of this article may denote a sort of chronology in these aspects of game development, none of them was made "one after another". I was drawing as my partner was writing; in effect, all of these parts occurred at the same time).
Before you forget, recall that Today, We March is a commemoration of my batch's graduation — a special event that holds a significant place in my heart — an event demarcating the boundary between the high school and college chapters of my and all of our lives. While much of our humor was able to shine, this is by no means an "unserious" game. This game, this story, is serious through and through. It's what we lived, of course it means a lot.
I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the game, its story, its various real life inspirations, and the audiences I had in mind when creating it. Specifically, Today, We March was written not just for me, but also for you, and for us.
TWM was written "for me" in the sense that it acted somewhat like a journal for my graduation experiences. Almost everything in the game: from arriving to school early, to getting my hairpins fixed by my boyfriend, to walking on stage and being greeted by my adviser, and all these things were inspired directly from what I saw on the day itself. In a way, TWM is like a time capsule, holding within it not just my lived being during that day, but also the feelings encapsulated within that vessel of mine, that mixture of captivation, of hope, of fear, of dread. Of missing people. Of bittersweet goodbyes. Of panged regrets. Of wanting to go. Of not... wanting to go.
But I didn't want TWM to be solely a one-man trip, a self-centered journey, so to speak. I wanted it to properly encapsulate the may-have-been feelings of just about anyone who had undergone the same due processes. It wasn't just a crude representation of how I had felt, but maybe how anyone had felt going up that stage, of how you may have felt when you grabbed your diploma — all sweaty hands — off your school's director. This "you"-centric view of the world is what drove me to make TWM character dialogue-heavy rather than introspective monologue-heavy. Rue (the main character) has their own thoughts, but for the most part, you're listening to the thoughts of others. And, if I may be so lucky and honored, perhaps you'll end up listening to yourself, one way or another, by playing the game.
But... maybe above all else... Today, We March was written "for us". For the batch, maybe. But, more importantly, for all the people I had come to know and love. All of my best friends and close acquaintances — all of them and their spirits and their memories found their way into this game. One of my best friends once said to me, "I am a mosaic of the people I've met." This game is an adaptation of my mosaic, and it's the greatest mosaic I've ever come to know. As usual, an adaptation is an adaptation, and adaptations are never perfect. If I could have, I would have stolen the brainwaves of my friends and electronically transplanted them into the characters of the game. But alas, I had to settle with what I know, what these people have made me feel, and through those I've tried to incorporate their souls into silly bytes of unicode. One may argue that what others made me feel isn't necessarily who they are, and I agree. These people are so much more than the 8x8 caricatures and their 20 or so lines in the game. But I also argue that it's a pretty good interpretation of our community, all things considered. Besides, who are we if not the impact we give?
With that said, to all the people who I've blatantly and unapologetically used as inspiration for Today, We March: thank you. You damn bastards know who you are. I hope you know that you hold a space in my heart, and you're part of who I am today. At its core, this game is about people, and it just so happens to be about people I know. Thank you for making Today, We March what it is. Thank you for making my life what it is.
Final Thoughts
Today, We March is perhaps the most important piece I've worked on so far, and I'm glad I was able to work on it with my best friend and love of my life. This game was a month of long labor and hard work, and since I usually talk about my projects to my friends, it was especially hard to keep things secret this time. I wanted everything to be a surprise! And I'm glad, because the response was breathtaking. People cried to the game... cried!!! I didn't think I could even produce anything with a semblance of emotional prowess, let alone one that could drive people to tears. In fairness, it might be the fresh memory of graduation that did them in... but I like to think I had a hand in this! The fact that people thoroughly enjoyed this experience that we'd worked so hard on — it just makes my heart absolutely melt. Thank you to everyone who dedicated an hour of their lives to hear us out. What took you an hour to complete, took us hundreds to develop, and thousands to experience. Here's to thousands more for us all.
P.S.: Seeing as though the project is all but done, here, have access to this. It's our ideas document. Enjoy.
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