Crack the code of crafting amazing interactive fiction
Become an author with a published game that players will loveand start building your portfolio of games, as a solo developer or through a publisher
Did you know that interactive fiction is one of the hottest gaming niches?
Popularity of the interactive fiction, choose your own adventure games and text only games is on the rise! The success of games such are Lifeline, Choice of Dragons and Fallen London is obvious and even the Netflix is entering the field (did you play Bandersnatch already?)...
... but the audience is craving for more and there aren't that many good games... There simply isn't enough of good interactive fiction out there!
The publishers are on the lookout for the new writing stars, the players are hungry for new games...
Do you see how this can be an opportunity for you?
Yeah but...<insert whatever is blocking you here>
Seriously. I know writing a game is not easy.
Maybe you are a writer already, a copywriter, a screenplay expert or just someone with so many stories to tell. You've probably tackled a big piece, like started a novel or a movie script of even game design document.
And writing a game is so much more challenging than traditional writing...
There are multiple story lines to come up with, meaningful choices, interesting characters and while you can see them in your mind, they all seem to slip through your fingers once you start writing...
Maybe you keep promising yourself you will come back to your project but you never do... or you've started with great enthusiasm but what started as fun journey turned into... well, into a mess!
I was there where you are now...
Hi, I'm Grandpa Tiger and I get it. When I set out to write my own games, I already had 27 years of gaming journalism under my belt. I was in my 9th year of game design and game production, hell I even coached writers for years, torch of teaching passed to me by my mentor, the most translated living author in my country...
But it was kinda embarrassing, every time I got to writing a game, I failed!
I've published dozen games, and none of them made any impact on players. And, as I was kind of a big deal, everyone seemed to expect me to finally publish that big blockbuster game.
So one day, I decided it was enough. Either I'll crack the code (I do write great fiction, after all!), or I'll go back to writing game reviews and never ever speak or think about writing a game again...
I did the next logical step and tried getting more education. I've scoured the web to find a course on writing for games.
Here's what I've discovered...
Regular writing courses can't help you
Don't get me wrong, writing courses are awesome. But they mostly do it from point of view of style, grammar, focusing on paragraphs, passages, sentences.
Screenplay courses are cool, they can teach you about dialogues, drama, thinking in terms of scenes and episodes.
That's not what's been blocking me, however. I needed something else to get unstuck.
I asked myself what are games all about? What's the secret to fun in games? How to create interesting chocices, how to let players make important decisions? I remembered my days in gaming industry... how we rushed to be creative, since constructing and designing games felt more like bureaucracy than having fun. I wanted to crack the code so that I would write amazing games while keeping the sweet creative juice!
And with a little help of Japanese horror, standup comedy, movie directors, psychology behind human perception, narratology and bit of luck I've finally did it. I managed to come up with a process that works.