Summary
Display Case Memories is an interactive fiction game made in Twine where you choose which piece of your life to bring with you before moving homes.
You can play it on itch.io!
Requirements
Certain requirements had to be fulfilled as part of the game jam I participated in. Per the rules, this game had to be made:
within an hour,
with the tool of the month,
in a way that relates to the theme word.
The tool we used for the jam is Twine, "... an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories."
This month's theme word was "display". The game I made had to somehow incorporate the word "display" into its design.
Prototype goal
I wanted to explore and express an idea: What if I could only keep one memory for the rest of my life? And what if this memory came in the form of a plastic figurine?
Concept
When brainstorming the concept for this game, I thought about a striking idea I heard on a podcast:
When great people who shift culture and change society... when their physical form passes... people raise another physical form of them.
- Junoflo on Junoflo (주노플로) & Los (로스) - Fun With Dumb - Ep. 28
It had me thinking about how we display statues everywhere as cognitive artifacts that aid us in remembering events in the past.
This game in particular focused on the intimate and individual experience of someone sorting through their own personal history in the form of gachapon figurines, little capsule toys that can be purchased at random from a vending machine.
But where do figurines come into all of this? Like statues, figurines are the same thing, just on a miniature scale. Statues store and represent the histories and memories, whether collective or individual, we assign to them. It only makes sense that we can store memories in them.
Design and implementation
When making this game, I went about multiple approaches that reflect not only my interest in design, storytelling, and coding but also my background as a UX and Product Designer.
System Design
The game system's core design follows the Risk and Reward framework by Masahiro Sakurai.
Risks for the player include:
(Narrative) Losing all of their memories except for the one they chose.
(Systemic) Increasing the Anxiety counter every time they inspect a box or memory.
For the Rewards, the player can achieve the following:
(Narrative) Cherishing the one memory they still have, forever.
(Systemic) Once the Anxiety counter reaches a certain number, they can select memories to ignore, and upon another number, entire boxes.
Due to time constraints, the Systemic Risk and Reward couldn't be implemented for the prototype's game jam version. However, you can see the Systemic Risk in action when playing the public version (made after the jam).
Content Design
When creating the game's fiction it was only natural that I have it focus on someone's precious gachapon figurine collection. After all, I have my very own collection scattered throughout my room.
The descriptions for each memory are inspired by moments from my own life. For example, Shiny Bear is an actual gachapon charm I got with a friend during the COVID pandemic. Using my own life as a reference for the content was crucial in designing the game's essential experience.
Narrative Design
The design decision to make players choose only one memory was inspired by my wondering what I'd do if I could only save one figurine from my actual collection.
Would I feel regret? Sadness? Regardless, I thought this situation made for an interesting narrative situation and included it as a mechanic.
UX Design
For this game's concept to make sense, I made a mental model organizing the content in a way that reflects real life.
So when playing the game players are interacting with three types of discrete objects:
Display cases
Figurines
Memories
This specific mental model helps players understand what "things" they're coming across inside the game's world, which itself is contextualized by another mental model- The game's story.
UI Design
Going through different memories/figurines is nice and all, but I realized that at a certain point it might become tiring to go through a big list of hyperlinks.
To mitigate this issue I structured the game's information to display information according to a hierarchy:
The player begins by seeing a list of all display cases.
When they select a case to look through they see a list of figurines inside of it.
Upon selecting a figurine, players see a description of a memory that figurine holds.
After reading the memory's description, the player sees a choice to either keep this memory or to check out the other ones.
Prioritizing what information to show at any given time created an interface that avoids overwhelming players with too much information.
Implementation
The main challenge with making this fun little concept a reality was my inexperience with implementing storylets, modular pieces of content that are shown once certain prerequisites are met.
I decided to build my game prototype using the Harlowe format since it makes using storylets easy by providing macros. It was exciting to learn a new feature but my lack of knowledge meant I couldn't finish implementing them in time during the game jam hour.
The game jam version of this prototype simulates the intended storylets design using Twine's vanilla hyperlink feature. But I looked forward to trying out storylets so much that I went back and fully implemented them for the public version.
Wow factor
First off, I just want to say that my game is cool. At least, I personally think so.
That said, I believe that this prototype's rough state wouldn't let it be taken seriously outside of this jam's context. Reasons include:
A lack of visual design polish.
Under-developed story scenario.
Reactions towards the game
I received two reactions to this game so far.
Player #1 - Mostly positive
My fellow Game Club member, who's familiar with Twine's format, had the following reactions:
The game making the player reflect on their own similar experiences struck a chord with him.
Showing the story to the player made the player character's history interesting to learn about.
The unfinished mechanics showed him a potential gameplay experience he feel he'd enjoy.
Player #2 - Opportunities for improvement
After the jam ended, I showed the public version to my friend and silently observed how she interacted with my game as someone new to Twine games:
Was unsure of how to proceed with the game.
Asked questions about if she was playing properly.
Didn't seem to understand the concept (English being her second language may have played a factor).
Determining if I made a decent game prototype
I used NYU Prototype Studio's 2017 syllabus as a framework for self-critiquing my work.
How cool is it?
"If the prototype expresses an idea: how original, interesting or cool is the idea?"
My idea is: What if I could only keep one memory for the rest of my life? And what if this memory came in the form of a plastic figurine?
Player #1's positive reception to the game's concept leads me to believe this idea is interesting enough that fans of narrative-focused games might like it.
Player #2's reactions show me that newbies to interactive fiction may not understand it at first.
Is it worth working on more?
"Does your prototype prove conclusively that you should do more work on it, or that you shouldn’t?"
This prototype shows me that it's worth developing more to see how much further I can strengthen the concept and experience.
Did it follow the game jam's rules?
"Did your game match the constraint?"
The game jam's requirements were for the game to be made:
within an hour,
with the tool of the month,
in a way that relates to the theme word.
Display Case Memories's jam version was successfully made within an hour since storylets weren't necessary to demonstrate proof of concept.
It was also made completely within Twine and incorporated the theme word, "display". In the game, I refer to the cases holding the figurines as display cases.
Final thoughts
Overall this game prototype was a success. I'm proud of being able to execute a cool idea I had in my head within the span of an hour. I can't wait to see what other games I cook up in future DIA Game Jams!
And don’t forget, if you want to play Display Case Memories you can try it here!
About Justin Kim
I'm a UX and product designer with experience in AI usability, UX auditing, and project management. I specialize in game UX and design, particularly with AI and UX components, to create immersive digital storytelling in the games industry. When I’m not designing you can find me playing video games or reading a detective story.
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