The Start of Something

It's been a bit, but I am so excited to finally post this. I know it is a very simple game and really it's not even a full game, but a snippet of something much bigger. I want to take some time to talk about the process of making this and where I hope to go next!

The Process so Far

So, I am very new to Twine, only really starting to use the program within the last few months. I've had a more linear narrative story I've wanted to tell for a long while now, but when I saw some of the projects others created in Twine, I knew this was how I wanted to tell my story.

I began to watch some videos and read up on how to format in Twine and then in Microsoft word, I planned out what I wanted to create. As the story progressed, I thought it would be fun to add an arena where you could visit each day and gain some extra items and coins. However, I found myself sinking more and more time in to the arena then I was the rest of the narrative sections so I made the hard decision to remove it from the narrative game.

It felt bad to remove it, but I couldn't let it's scope sink the rest of the game. I did really enjoy the process of making the arena and coming up with enemies so much that I decided that I couldn't abandon the project entirely so I separated it and created the Mini Arena! In it's beginning state I had very different health and weapon systems in place. At the time I was just learning how to use datamaps in Twine so it was time to revamp the old system!

I decided I wanted to do a heal system because I found that when testing the game I very rarely used the spells since their damage was much less then the weapons. The effects were also not worth the risk of using then taking damage.  A friend of mine who played the game asked if it was even worth using the healing spell and while trying to think about it I came to the conclusion that it wasn't. That was when the idea for the heals system was born.

I also did revamps to the weapons system to bring it in line with the heals system.  I made both these systems with the narrative game in mind because then I would be able to easily repurpose them later on. After a little more polish, Mini Text Based Arena was done!

What's Next?

Now that the basic systems are done, I can use this to speed up the process in implementing a combat system into the narrative game and any other game I want to make. It may be simple, but it's a start and I hope to use this to make even better Twine games and eventually branch out into creating narrative and story for 2D and 3D games. I'm very excited by what I learned making this and hope you do get some enjoyment from playing it. Again, it is quite basic, but it's just the beginning to my game dev journey.

My next project is much larger and will be much more narrative based. I have had a story in mind for years and cannot wait to begin to bring it to the world. If you've read to here or played the game, I want to say Thank You! It means a lot and I appreciate it more then you could know :)