Process

This week I found "Videogames and the Practice of Play" by Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux to be really interesting to read. In my understanding, they are talking about that video games are not "games", they are "equipment for making metagames". Games can be in any form, anything, but the added parts are the thing to create a metagame, such as the interactions, reward systems, achievements and etc. I like to make immersive games with a sense of substitution, which can connect real-life experiences with games. I like to let players bring themselves into the game step by step from reality. This time, using two platforms to make a metagame gives me a better way to realize this situation.

I decided to make a bedtime storyteller store using Twine, and tell the story using interactions (let players be in the story to experience the story) using Bitsy. This week I spent a lot of time experiencing different interactions and skills in Twine and Bitsy, so the game itself wasn't really big. I focused on how to increase the interactive feeling of the game.

I made an input box in Twine, so the player can type anything to talk back to the game. This way makes the players look like they are talking to a store assistant in the reality. I also add some emojis to increase the emotions, besides only using cold text, emojis make the text have a more human face.

I set up some choices players can choose based on their experiences, adding players' sense of substitution. Players will get different feedback when they choose different options. 

After the player made their choice, there's a link that brings the player to the Bitsy game — an interactive storyteller. Because my game is about storytelling, so I added a Bitsy hack — animal crossing-style audio, which gives the dialogue some sounds kind of like speaking but not speaking human words.