Welcome to the EFU Dev Blog - I'm sharing updates on this project, as well as my broader journey into the misty realms of writing for games.
Introduction: Why write for games?
Let's start, as I've found all python games do, with a definition (haha): By "games", I include video games, Visual Novels, Interactive Fiction, TTRPGs, board games and pretty much anything I can get my teeth into when it comes to conceptualising an immersive, interactive world.
As well as Escape From Underrock, I'm working on a TTRPG expansion book of game mechanics, quests, class and race additions, lore and world-building compatible with d20 system sci-fi games such as Starfinder, Cyberpunk Red and Shadowrun. You may see this, and other projects, occasionally raise their head to comment - though the focus is my journey into the writing, narrative design and novice coding of a choose-your-own adventure fantasy visual novel RPG.
In search of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
I've been worldbuilding games in my head, as many of us have, from the age of imagination. My earliest memory creating a character for a game was aged 7, as my brother and I were inaugurated into the world of Dungeons & Dragons - lovingly passed on from our dad, a long-time DM and table-top gamer.
By the time I turned 13, my brother and I had brought friends and classmates into the fold and made an hour-long fantasy film heavily inspired by the Lord of The Rings trilogy, which had concluded two years previous. We were still playing D&D, and had eagerly jumped ship from our much-loved RTS video games (predominantly Age of Empires II and its expansion Age of Mythology) to the absolute dreamscape of BioWare's Neverwinter Nights - a seminal top-down RPG that would go on to inspire the likes of Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate (sort of) and The Witcher. I read recently that CDPR actually licensed the game engine from BioWare when they were designing their initial build.
During this childhood were long car journeys and train rides; to see relatives, or attend bed-and-breakfasts adjacent to good hiking trails. With the family PC, a grey Windows XP, out of reach, I found other roads to my imagination. While Pokémon Silver and LOZ: Oracle of Seasons saw me through younger years on the trusty GameBoy Color (mine was a deep turquoise), it was in the adolescent tweens that I entered the world of Fighting Fantasy, choose-you-own-adventure novels created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.
Now, writing my first string-narrative story, it's those car journeys I'm thinking of. Can I build a story with just enough game mechanics behind it that it's dynamic and interactive, but not so much that I spend the next two years teaching myself to code without doing any actual writing? Will it be played on a Switch, Steam Deck or iPhone by a tweenager with their headphones in eager to drift off into another world? I hope so. But, wait -
"I'll never be able to write my own game!" *Discovers VN python frameworks, YouTube and Reddit tutorials*
"Oh..."
*AI Disclaimer:
Placeholder images in this blog and the game's sample build have been generated using AI. It is not my intention to claim ownership, profit from or license a game using AI content, these are a tool to help conceptualise the game aesthetic and the world of Underrock. Should the opportunity arise to work with an artist on this project, these images will be replaced.
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