Novella

So I was flicking through my book o' notes where I jot down my game ideas, game-flows, put annoying evented systems with conditional branches into flow-charts etc etc and I came across this sketch I did ages ago, way before I even started on this game, which may be a somewhat familiar scene to those who've played the current version of Novella:



The line is from a Taking Back Sunday song called "...slowdance on the inside" and is one of my favorites.

Here's where I ramble about nothing of importance for a while:

As I've mentioned before, this whole game is pretty much a patchwork of bits and pieces from songs and albums but they're all tied together, in a patchwork-ey way into distinct scenes in the game's unfolding because the idea I had for this game was to try to tell a story without much storytelling, trying to tell a big story in a short space of time by using what's implicit in every scene to the fullest extent I could: Music seems to do this a lot and very well (at least to me) so I tried to put that into a game.

Another thing I tried to do with this game was to ensure that the references I used weren't "standalone lines" by which I mean; if a player decided to research some of the lines I'd used in this game and read the lyrics or listened to the songs from which those lines came then they'd actually end up with a fuller understanding of what's happening in the "story". In a way I'm using other media as secondary material or a "companion work" even though that material pre-dates this game. This inclination of mine sort of comes from reading House of Leaves and once having a little thing for ARGs - I've always been somewhat enamoured with the idea of entertainment media that invites you into a collaborative breaking the fourth wall and points you toward other aspects of reality or other media in order to deepen the meaning and experience of the work. So I guess my inclination to do that a little bit here was a nod to those.

Anyway that's all I got. :>