Hi! 

Just wrote this quick design document to help me focus down on the ideas I had for my game. If anyone else finds this interesting, I'd be happy to have the help!

Outline:

Set in the Hebrides after an unspecified societal collapse, the game involves building a shipping network to share resources with nearby islands. The player can travel between up to four ports, transporting goods and conversing with locals. Decisions made in conversations and choices about what to transport impact the world. The game is themed around rebuilding community and inter-dependency after a traumatic event, and learning from past mistakes to rebuild a better world.

Design decisions to make:

Engine:

While I’m more familiar with Inform and would quite like to build a parser-based game, building the required conversation and transport systems is likely to be more complex in Inform, and narrowing the possibility space will be more time consuming. Therefore, a hypertext engine like Twine will probably be more appropriate, but I’m still a bit conflicted.

Mechanics:

The game needs some sort of conversation mechanic, some sort of travel mechanic, and a way to choose what cargo to carry. It could also include navigation, or a way to explore the areas you travel to. I’m not currently sure how much emphasis to place on each of these mechanics (ie. Abstract travel, focus on conversation, or vice versa.) I would also like to implement puzzles of a “Fox, Hen, Grain” variety – ie. Have negative/positive outcomes occur if certain cargo is carried together or by a certain captain. I’d like to avoid implementing economic mechanics, in contrast to most games with a similar theme. The boat can carry two units of cargo, items are not fungible. If exploration mechanics are implemented, then additional small items may be portable.

Characters:

I’d like to implement a mechanic where the player controls multiple captains. This allows for more complexity in transport puzzles and allows different characters to discover different information through dialogue – fleshing out different sides of the characters you encounter. However, I suspect this is too complex a system for a two-week jam game. If enough people were interested in writing dialogue variations, it might be possible, but otherwise I’m inclined to leave this mechanic to the side.

This sounds pretty interesting! I'd love to help with the dialogue variations or other writing you might need. As far as engine/mechanics go, I haven't used Inform, but I'm familiar with Twine (Harlowe specifically) and could help with that if you decide on using it.

If you'd rather do Inform 7, I wonder if making some parts a choice-based thing with the Hybrid Choices extension might make that more viable?

This game both sounds like a game I'd totally play and one that would be both fun and stressful to program, depending on how many things you include. I'm also a mostly-Inform person considering making a Twine game for this - I might be biased, but I think Inform could be perfectly workable if you keep it simple and, as JoshGrams said above, use some useful extensions like Hybrid Choices (which is great for keeping dialogue streamlined).

The premise also sounds neat - I love the idea of using the fox/hen/grain puzzle as a way to create different outcomes with cargo. Are you planning on using just items or also passengers? I can imagine different ways that could play out in storytelling with items-only, items and some passengers, and passengers-only.

I like the different captains idea a lot but I can understand why it might seem kind of ambitious for this timeframe. (Though writing for that also sounds like a lot of fun, TBH.) You could always figure out a restriction per captain maybe that simplifies or directs what makes each captain's interactions different - for example, if you had the 3 captains be at different points in time or times of year instead of having their actions affect each other's shared environment (although that might be part of the fun you're looking for). Alternately, it could be something like "captain 1: a local, everyone knows this person"; "captain 2: a stranger, no one knows this person"; "captain 3: has a relationship with either captain 1 or captain 3."

Lots of options and I'm sure it's mostly a matter of what you want to take on in the timeframe. Either way, it sounds promising.

ETA: would be happy to pitch in, though my resume is just "Inform and Twine tinkering and buggy games" and "boat- and ocean-related fiction interests."

Hi. This sounds like a great premise, and I'd be happy to contribute some writing. I'm particularly interested in choice-based IF and have tinkered with Twine quite a bit over the last few weeks, specifically Snowman as I'm comfortable with JavaScript and CSS. I'm a relative newbie to IF and this is my first game jam, but I'd be happy to help.