Posted September 11, 2025 by andrewdoubleu
For this school project, we were tasked to create a simple narrative-based game. I decided to use Twine to create a text adventure loosely based on a D&D game I ran a few years ago. During the development process, I kept a daily journal of notes, ideas, and other thoughts. What follows is a condensed version of those notes.
Sept 3
In my view, text adventures have a very similar structure to point-and-click games. (Sierra point-and-clicks are a direct descendant of earlier text-based parser games after all.) I haven't played a lot of text games, but I've seen plenty of point-and-clicks. The game loop that I have observed revolves around choosing actions from a predetermined list of choices. I personally find this frustrating and unengaging because choosing the "wrong" result usually ends in a lose state, and you are forced to reload a save. Oftentimes, progress ends up relying on a process of trial and error.
However! A game where this issue doesn't occur is D&D! As a DM, I find great joy in having my players deal with the consequences of failure. Likewise, success doesn't end the game either. Either way, success or failure simply progress the story. I find this fascinating. Winning and losing seem like they should be complete opposites, but in D&D they are almost functionally the same thing. Is that something I can try and capture?
I realize this is a rather lofty premise on which to base a simple 3-week long project, but I simply can't resist a spark of curiosity.
Development roadmap.
My plan is to create the whole game's structure without worrying about any flavour text. I'll get the bones of the logic and pathways down and build it out from there. I'm not concerned about my ability to write prose, it's the game logic that I am concerned about.
Following the D&D theme, I'd really love to potentially have the player roll a physical D20 to determine the outcome of skill checks. At the moment I'm not sure what that will look like, but I'll try it anyway.
(It's almost funny looking at this rough flowchart now. The actual finished game tree is so much more complex.)
Sept 4
I've been reading through the Harlowe documentation and trying to get a better grasp on how it works. Currently, I have the player enter their roll result in an input box, but I might change it to a dropdown if that's possible. I'm also going to implement a typical fighter/rogue/wizard class system. It'll be very rudimentary, but I think it will make the experience feel more genuine.
Using Twine has turned out to be much easier than I expected. I think I have the basic code figured out, so now I will actually build out the structure according to the flowchart.
The game will have a timer which counts down to sunset. This is based on a mechanic from the real game this story is based on. If the player reaches their destination before sunset, a different scenario will play out than if they reach it after nightfall.
At first, I wanted to get the physical D20 involved just for fun, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Sometimes the dice are the best storytellers at the game table. I am simply asking the player in this game to be honest about their rolls, but even if they lie, I don't think it matters. Higher numbers don't always mean desirable outcomes.
For instance, I included a scenario where the player gets caught in a trap. If they succeed on the check, they will avoid the trap and move on without wasting any time. However, if they fail, they lose time but they also find a skeleton with a cool sword, which they can loot.
I am starting to worry that the story is gonna get away from me a little.
Sept 8
Took a bit of a break, and during that time I pondered some potential problems. I haven't built the branching paths towards the end, but I realized that it could quickly grow out of control. If I give the player all the agency I want to, then I will need a ton of different scenarios.
Still, I feel as though I need the player’s earlier choices to meaningfully impact the later section of the game. If I don’t do that, then there’s no point in having those choices available at all.
Let me break this down a little.
So, for the first encounter, your chosen class doesn’t really affect anything that much. Really it just gives you an advantage in the corresponding choice. For the second encounter, I want to present more class specific options. (i.e. one option for each)
The third encounter will further hone in on your specific class. If you had succeeded in the second encounter, it will lead you towards the option that will benefit you the most.
(I should clarify that at no point in the ideation process did I want to actually put an actual combat encounter in the game. To be honest combat is my least favourite part of DND and I am not interested in trying to recreate it here.)
So what I’m thinking I’ll do is try to have it so all the options converge towards similar results. I’m working with the principle in mind that no matter what the player’s choices are, there will be at least one interesting element that they bring into the story. The idea isn’t to actually give some advantage, but rather just to make the player feel like the story they played through is their own and that their choices are recognized.
Sept 9
Well it was a bit tedious but I managed to get the whole tree completed.
Honestly the most challenging part has been trying to make the player choice seem rewarding. Obviously I will need to playtest before I really know if I succeeded or not. My method in developing it so far is simply not including a choice in the first place if I don’t have a follow-up.
Managed to get a couple playtests in. It seemed to go well! I realize now that I will definitely need to make sure the story has more context. The story is certainly not fully fleshed out but the playtesters were still confused as to what happened.
We're now caught up to the present. Over the next week I will be fleshing out the story and hopefully I will have the opportunity to add some art.