I spend a couple of weeks wondering how to nicely put a tutorial for a lot of radically different gameplay sequences. How will I do it properly? Well, for all I know, you either put a special “level 0” to tech the basics or you introduce the mechanics once they’re required. And I don’t like that. I did thought about how I could insert it in a diegetic way (it may be my dogma for this game), but it fell short some way or another.

Another problem crept in: The story I want to have in my game is spread accross a long period of time, with ellipses that keep being longer. I like the idea of the player having to reacclimate themselves regularly. I had a good reason, story wise, but all in all, it meant a larger game.

Early on, when I did some research on the playdate specs (and the limitations), I was quite pleased about the audio capabilities. I wanted to add a lot of ambiant musics to compensate for the lack of graphic fidelity. As I made a large preselection of track (amusingly, mostly from one artist) I also realised the game would have a big size.

I came up with what I think could be a good idea: Split the game. Currently, I have a short prologue, 3 chapters, and the epilogue.

The prologue would introduce the setting and the overall story, and was meant to be a tutorial of sort. Each following chapters represent a progression linked to the theme of the game. The epilogue is meant to represent both a reflexion about how the player reached this conclusion (amongst other), what did it cost them and how things could have end differently.

So a demo as a short prologue, and some time after, the release of chapter 1. This mean I have to rearrange so part of the story to allow the chapter 1 to be mostly a stand alone. I think I can make it work this way.

Yet, another problem came up: The player is meant to make some decisive choices, so, how will I be able to keep them between chapters? Right now, my solution is both to use sideloading, and have a contingency plan if no previous savegame file is found.

No previous savegame? No worries, the player will get to chose how it previously ended, and some other variables will be set from random/player’s related data. All in a diegetic way, of course. I will find a way to export savegame in a compact form.

So, having a game size for each part allow me to do more, while keeping a proper story for each part.

More about it later :)