AdvJam2021 retrospective part 1

In the last post I talked about doing a post mortem on my AdvJam project. When my wife read the article, she found it strange. How can you do a post mortem on something that is not dead, but rather that’s just starting to grow?
She is right. So let’s call this a retrospective instead.

What is the jam about?

When the jam began, I thought about what the focus of this jam might be.
Is it about puzzle design? Is it about atmosphere or about storytelling? Is it technical achievements? Is it visual achievements?
On the jam frontpage it says: 

By »adventure game« we mean an interactive experience with enough content to tell some form of story, explore a character, or have some sort of adventure, however you define that.

Two weeks for a single person is not a lot to work with.
So the way I see the jam, it’s about storytelling. Which is great!
Storytelling is what a lot of big budget games are pretty poor at considering said budget and what a lot of indies today are amazing at.
Storytelling is also my strong suit.

After I did a very bleak game in 2019 which was mostly narrative through text, I wanted to be more visual this time and I didn’t want the game to be quite as bleak.

What and how

»Project ExodusTerram sent ships to colonize Mars. You’re the last man on earth, teaching an AI what it means to be human.«

There is actually quite a bit of humour in it and it’s not even very black humour. There are hints that this might not be quite the world of our own. At least something is off.
You probably wouldn’t build an advanced AI with mainframe technology and still use bulky CRT-screens if this was your average future setting. And is that a Laserdisc on the shelf in Oswald’s TV corner next to those VHS tapes? 😉
Now I don’t want to over-explain. If you missed all that, you probably rushed what little of a game is there yet.

Narrative and game design

My starting point for this jam was my existing narrative document I started for Exodus terram earlier this year. It’s a draft of all the important scenes in the game from beginning to end.
At the start of the jam I organized those using yWriter. It was clear to me that I didn’t want to run into the pitfalls of building a demo that had nothing to do with my game.
In commercial games it’s often the case that game show demos are a branch of the actual game being developed and later scrapped.
I decided I wanted to build the beginning of the game and let the player explore.
Not over-explain anything but rather rely on the player’s natural curiosity.
The game starts with a quote: 

»It doesn’t take much to launch a rocket into orbit. A task simple enough for an electron brain the size of a dinosaur.«  – Oswald Isaak

The next screen shows a nameless suburb in the Ruhr area, Germany. It is the near future. Now if you’re not from Germany, you may not know this. But the Ruhr area used to be one of the main industrial areas, especially in terms of mining, steelworks, you name it. Today there is modern industry. There are many cities next to each other, with rural areas and relatively green suburbs in between. (On an unrelated note, it happens to be where I live. 😉)
So no, we don’t have typical deserts in Germany. None that I know of.
Anyway. It’s implied that the man we see walking into the next screen is Oswald (our player character).

A good story creates questions in the head of the reader.
There are those general questions like:
What kind of a world is this? When and where does the story take place?
Who is my protagonist?
What challenges does my protagonist face and how?
What is happening next?

Now the first gameplay screen shows a desert-like scene. The sun is blazing. Oswald is exhausted. The first thing he says is »Home …« If you look closely he props himself on a shovel like on a cane when he’s not walking.

I had a whole bunch of questions for Exodus terram that the beginning should raise:
What happened? (Why is the Ruhr area desert-like? Why is it a nameless subburb? How far in the future are we talking?)
Who is Oswald? What is he like? What does he want, what does he need? What challenges is he facing?
Why is he walking around in the blazing sun? Where did he just come from?

The first thing you can hardly overlook is a mint green house in the background with a giant satellite dish on the roof. If you look at it or interact with it, Oswald says he has to go home and get out of the sun. So you have a clear objective.

The objects he encounters in the next screens tell you something both about his view of the world and the world itself. Busses aren’t running anymore. Houses are abandoned, there are hints of vandalism. There are no cars and no people around. The houses may have been occupied after the original owners left.

He reaches the mint green house. Other than the giant satellite dish, it has solar panels and several air conditions attached to it. The road ahead is torn open, there is an abandoned building site and a hole in the street, which is blocked off.
He enters the house through the cellar. Some personal items can be seen in the hallway already. He enters the main room. Sort of a underground living room with TV and easy chair and a fireplace in the foreground. There is also a dog bed, but no dog around. On a close look there is a VHS player on the CRT-TV, home videotapes in the cabinet and a laserdisc of a space mission on the shelf (which he often watched as a child).
On the right side there is another room, like a lab, seperated off by a wall. It is semi-lit with fluorescent lamps. There are racks of computers, possibly mainframe equipment in the dark. A old-school terminal with a bulky CRT screen showing log files.

Questions:
Where did the people go (in their cars)?
Why the old-school tech?
What kind of lab is this?

The very right of the room is covered in further equipment. There is a hologram projector displaying a hovering face. This is Demi, described as humanity’s last hope.

Oswald talks to it as if it was human, or tries to. Demi does not understand.
He tries to explain. There is a testing protocol »humanity« which showed no progress since the last test. Oswald is stressed and Demi tries to help with a diagnosis.
However time until the last possible upload is running out. Only ten days left.

Oswald is at a loss. He has nobody to ask for advice. Danielle would have thought of something. The only one he can talk to is Demi. So he does. He begins talking about her creation.

It was long before the Exodus. Before Mars ever was an option.
Danielle played a part in creating Demi, too.
The final screen shows Oswald and his younger self as a nerdy kid.

Further questions:
Who and where is Danielle?
What purpose was Demi created for?
What is the upload about and why is it only possible within ten days?
What is the Exodus? What about Mars?
What role does his younger self play?

This is where the jam project ends. But it is to be continued …

These are just some of the questions I wrote down for myself when building this jam’s entry. 

In the next post I will continue the retrospective. I will talk some more about the process, about art, about some of the technology and how it all came together.
What the challenges were and what choices I made to deal with them.