Halloween Special - Making of the game

Hello, everyone! This is my  first devlog. Had I known earlier that I could make "postmortem" devlogs, I would have shared this on the anniversary of the game, which was on May, 1st (that's my fault for not checking out all of itch.io's features when I made this account).  To make up for it, I decided to post this on Halloween, since the game focuses on a ghost.

I would like to talk about the process of making the game and answer some questions you might have.

1. How did you get the idea to make this game?

To understand the story better, let me give you some context:

First of all, I'm a beginner artist on Tumblr and, occasionally, I draw artwork related to my original characters, Tulip being one of them. There are so many things I want to share about them on my blog, but I'm very slow at drawing, so I haven't been able to post much about them.

Another thing you need to know is that I've been a long-time fan of Buzzfeed Unsolved and Ghost Files, so as I as watching the latest episodes, I would sometimes think "What would Ryan and Shane do if they went to the tulip field? And what would Tulip do if she saw them?". I considered once making fanart featuring my OC, but I later discarded the idea because I realized it would be weird to draw her interacting with real people.

Around the same time, I was coming up with ideas for Tulip's lore and I was very excited to share them on Tumblr. The problem though was that I knew it was going to take a long time to make the character sheet and the necessary illustrations to complement the pieces of lore, and I was busy with other projects (a novel I'm writing and a palette challenge I still haven't finished yet).

It was then when I saw a post giving a list of free game engines and, among them, was Twine, which I was familiar with (I don't remember how I first learned about it, but it was through YouTube). So then, I thought about making an interactive story to show how Tulip would react in the presence of a ghost hunter or someone coming to the field for other reasons. Since I wasn't going to draw the fanart I mentioned earlier, I decided to make the main character of the game a Ghost Files fan and reference some of the tools used in the show (I rewatched some scenes to see how I was going to describe them and how they worked).

2. Why did you choose Twine to make the game?

I chose Twine because it was free and I didn't have to download it (at the time, I didn't have a lot of storage left in my computer). Also, I wouldn't have to draw anything, which was good for me.

If you're curious, this is what the story map looks like:

3. Why doesn't the game have any music or sound effects?

Since I have no experience in coding, I chose the Harlowe format in Twine, which is the recommended one for people like me (you still have to write code, but it's not as advanced as the others). However, the main disadvantage of Harlowe is that it's very difficult to add music. The tutorials I looked up were confusing and, according to some people in the comments, outdated. Also, said tutorials explained that you had to make a separate website to put the music and sound effects there and then put a link to said website in the code, which was something I was not willing to do.

I wasn't that mad about it, though. My mind at that moment was like "Relax, it's not an actual game; it's just an interactive way to present lore. Only your followers are going to play it". Surprisingly, the game got the attention of people unfamiliar with my blog and the comments have been very positive so far (I noticed that other Twine games don't feature music either, so I guess people don't mind it that much). I appreciate everyone who gave "The Tulip Field" a chance and I'm glad I made something that was interesting enough for others.

4. Do you plan to make more games in the future?

Originally, I was just going to publish "The Tulip Field" and disappear from itch.io, but the positive feedback I've received  has sparked my interest in making more games about my other characters. So, yes, I do plan to make them in the future, but after I post enough art and lore about my other OCs on Tumblr (which means you'll probably have to wait a few years, haha).  Don't worry, the stories for those games will be self-contained, so both my followers and newcomers can enjoy them.

My idea is to make these games to show "plot events" (there isn't actually an overarching plot, but all my OCs share the same universe, so they will interact with each other sometimes and interesting things will happen to them every now and then).

To not make this post too long, I'll just talk about the next game that will come out:

It will be an interactive fiction/horror game that focuses on the strange encounter between two of my OCs. You play as a demon girl who is trying to get a guy's soul, but eventually discover that he is hiding something from you. Out of all the future projects I have in mind, this one will be the easiest to make because I'll use Twine again; but it will be darker than "The Tulip Field".

That's all I wanted to share. Thanks to everyone who played the game and thanks to everyone who brought attention to it! If you have more questions, feel free to ask me in the comments.