Ludomancy

Storyteller

This is the third and last prototype I submitted for the experimental gameplay sessions at SOWN.

You are presented with a timeline, split into vignettes. It’s an interactive story about three characters and their choices in life in the context of a fairy tale. You can move them around in their vignettes to change their roles and what they do about it.

The interesting thing about this experiment is the immediate causality: you can see instantly how the choices you make affect the future, so the cost of experimenting with the story is almost zero. Some of the endings you can get are funny and not hardcoded into the game logic.

Hint: knights can kill wizards if they are overlapped.

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Cool idea. I don’t know if, in terms of the ‘gameplay experience’ I would have preferred it to one where you’re presented with the scenes in sequence.

The overlap-to-kill feature is very cool.

I like that people’s alignments are determined solely by where they grew up.

I have one ending scene where a tomb-stone (i think the woman’s) ends up being in love with the red-haired guy.

Aaah…exploring the other outcomes is interesting…

Okay; this is deeper than I originally though Big thumbs up

Wow, really surprising like the other prototypes. It’s soooo funny to expriment with all the possible combinations…
When will you be realeasing a game like this in DS!? It would be great, hah!?

LOL, is very fun to experiment with endings. I have a “gay” ending.

also: it would have *maybe* been fun if you could pull somebody back through time and have them kill their younger selves, causing some odd sort of paradox…(now that I think of it, that’s one of the interesting possibilities that this style of presentation affords you)

@increpare: I’m actually working on such idea…

(there seems to be a bug with the woman’s sword-fighting abilities that causes endless flickering in the future)

[...] can play the experiments here: Storyteller I wish I were the Moon The [...]

[...] prototype is the precursor point of the other two: Storyteller The [...]

Looks very interesting from the description, but it’s not working for me on either Firefox or IE. I’m only seeing the top vignette alone in the top-left with gray in all other areas, plus some unclosed tag code beneath it outside the flash movie. The movie alone doesn’t work, so I’m guessing it’s a problem when the swf isn’t displaying at the needed size. The other two work fine, and play great! Congrats on SOWN!

@noyb: I made an experiment on the website this morning, and it broke it… please try again

Thanks all for the support!

This might be my favorite of the three. The possibilities for this kind of gameplay are deep, indeed. It has the potential to incorporate an important message of how actions in the present can affect the future.

I liked that! Heh, I managed to get the final scene to be all 3 of them in love… but one of them a gravestone lol.

hey ummm i cant play nething y?

Your games are the best that i ever played. This one better than the rest. Thx for all !

Way to push the envelope. Good ideas. Keep pushing!

[...] que podemos modificar a nuestro antojo. Es de especial relevancia, bajo mi punto de vista el juego StoryTeller. Son juegos en formato web y muy interesantes, espero que os [...]

I really liked the pixel art in this, great concept too.

Amazing concept. I’m really excited to see what you do next as there so many different directions you can go with this type of gameplay.

[...] is a charming toy by Dan Benmergui. It gives the player three windows onto the same events, a vertical triptych. The [...]

[...] StoryTeller is a fun look a fairy tales, and the Happy Ending. It is playable here. The interesting thing about this experiment is the immediate causality: you can see instantly how the choices you make affect the future, so the cost of experimenting with the story is almost zero. Some of the endings you can get are funny and not hardcoded into the game logic. [...]

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