I will soon post a demo (20k) of a game idea I have, but I've got some pacing questions about the story

Game Development Writing and Content
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Hi ! This is my first time writing on the forum (and not my last I hope as I will soon be publishing a demo of a game I’ve developping) and I wanted to know if I should write my story

  • with a more extensive world building (with less choice in the beginning where I put the bases of the world down, but more freedom in the later stages, this is how I’m currently going and I quite like it, but I want my story to appeal to the biggest number of people)
  • more shallow, with less descriptions (I am guilty myself of skipping over some overly long descriptions in hog or cog game), with more choices but less well integrated setting and world building. The feeling of it might be less “information dumpy”, but the way the world building will be integrated won’t be as smooth

0 voters

Thank you for your help in advance : D !

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Plan C: Do all the intensive worldbuilding, then redact that chapter, start in media res, and give the info out in-game as flashbacks and conversation.

If your player doesn’t feel like they have agency early on they may not get to the later meat of the choices, even if it’s false agency.

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I’m writing a story right now with a tonne of really specific worldbuilding. I went the in medias res route. A significant amount of worldbuilding is built into the choices.

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Thank you for your reply ! Okay I kind of misrepresented the situation in the poll :sweat_smile:, in facts the player gets choices from the very first page and you won’t get an info dump from the beginning, it’s more like, mc is having a flashback of how the heck they ended in the plot (the background of the character is written on page 4 and the player has 3 different choices) and a few character stats are also inserted early on. I’m just afraid of putting too much description and making people fall out of the interactive part of the story. Thank you once again for the reply and the help !

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Yes ! I’m trying to go for the in medias res too because I won’t lie, when I see a few first pages with a story wall, I just skip over a part of it, or read it quickly. Thank you a lot for the reply !

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