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Origin story

  • Hasvers
  • 07/14/2014 10:51 AM
  • 2567 views
This is something I felt like sharing with the 6 gentlepersons who have subscribed to this gamepage, as it may shed some light on the less justifiable decisions I made in making this game. Especially the title, which is probably the worst I could do from a marketing point of view (either dry or cheesy depending on whether you know what it means).

Initially, the demo game for the engine* was supposed to be a parody of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, perhaps one of the best dialogues ever written. (it does seem unsufferably postmodern at first, but it is positively sensical and extremely clever). That turned out to be a problem, because really, there was nothing I could write that could hope to compare, even as a simple homage - and doubly so as I'm writing in a second language.

Then, a few months ago, an RM contest came along where you had to develop a game including the heroes and final boss from the RTPs of one RPG Maker. I couldn't help but ponder what could be done with that constraint. I soon decided that, if I took part to the contest (which I didn't, obviously), my RM game would be limited to the aftermath of the final battle - perhaps as flashforwards, interspersed in the battle itself, as the boss explained to the heroes why they wouldn't really win even if they won.

Everything that you'd collected during the nonexistent game, the treasures and skills and allies and factions, every element of backstory would be a consumable, discarded to counter the boss' predictions by making them at best bittersweet. After all, always up and always more until you conquer all evil in a final fight is a very teenage thing to dream about; being an adult is learning to go down gracefully.

Obviously, the game didn't make it past the concept stage, but the title did. Exeunt omnes is a stage direction, requiring all actors to leave the scene. That felt starkly appropriate.

When I discovered the IGMC and decided to participate with my own engine, my main problem was that the latter lacked especially in AI and in conversation flow. Thus, a monologue with a carefully controlled succession of points would fit the bill - and monologues are notoriously villainish things to do. So the title was too good to pass: a pompous latin phrase for my angsty villain (the scoring system was supposed to include a bonus for the number of latin phrases used during the argument, but I dialed down the cheesiness just a bit), a stage direction as a nod to the past Tom Stoppard-esque incarnation of this game, and a very literal description of what the game is about.

Now You Know.

Hope the story proved entertaining, and next time I'll make a short blog post about some design decisions on which I would gladly have the opinion of fellow devs (then I'll make the discourse-based games list vol. 2)

* (which engine is now officially named Jehuti, in a great surge of non-inspiration)

Posts

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I never would've imagined your English to be a second language.

Interesting insight. Thanks for sharing!
Haha thank you so much, it is a bit frustrating actually because it makes genre writing (like, say, Goblin Noir) very painstaking - I'm always getting the idiomatic expressions slightly wrong on the first try.

I will probably have to get native proofreaders for the next game, although sometimes there can be something pleasantly eerie to the unnatural sentences only a bad translation can engender (it really contributed to the atmosphere in the Russian game Pathologic)
Ah, you've played Pathologic? Personally I thought the translation was so bad it made things a little too obtuse, and I felt that I didn't understand as much of the plot as I was supposed to.

The idea for your first game sounds quite interesting - basically a reversal of this one, in a sense?

And your English is very good.
Thanks!

I did quit Pathologic after a bit - too much walking around for too little comprehension. But some of the atmosphere really stuck with me.

As for the first game, yes I guess it is! It's still a game I'd like to make, or to see someone else make some day. If I need another title I will call it "Vulnerant Omnes" and make this the "dark and omnes" series.
author=Hasvers
"Vulnerant Omnes"
I see what you did there.

Dark and omnes sounds .. kind of odd. Nevermind the meaning of that. Dark because you want to keep it in a darker, more sober tone?
No that was just a very bad pun with ominous, sorry about that! ;)

(And I'm glad there's someone to get my latin references instantly)
Oh. I was too much on latin to get that one, shame on me : D
Latin's a great language, really. You have a hard time doing that in another one.
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