Rook - GoT inspired medieval story (WIP, alpha stage of prologue)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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I am currently working on an interactive story as part of my Master of Media, and after having a great time playing Choice of Robots, I’ve decided to work on it with the ChoiceScript system. I’m hoping to finish at least the first chapter for the course, by the end of October.

1500×1030 2.36 MB

Title: Rook

Summary: Set in an European medieval kingdom, you are a knight’s squire of low-birth but well-cared for within the knight’s family. Your contented life is shattered however, by the last words of the king on his death-bed. With his dying breath, he acknowledges you as his bastard son, placing your life in danger and turmoil from that moment on.

Choose whether to prove your claim, putting you on a collision course with the Crown Prince; or simply try to survive each day, while unraveling the layers of conspiracy surrounding the throne.

Public Playtest (constantly updating): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/122504794/Rook%20Playtest/mygame/index.html

This is essentially a playable prologue where you can set-up the player character before venturing into the first real chapter of the story. It’s also a way for me to practice with actually working with ChoiceScript and deciding on the final mechanics.

Very early alpha stages, and incomplete, but please do read/play through what’s currently available and provide me with any feedback. It’s all appreciated!

Update 13/10/2015: First actual major update. Completed one ending, it follows the route that’s available (options that are incomplete are marked so just ignore them). After receiving some great critique from a friend, I’ve been working on incorporating far more personalization and choice. The current ending has more potential differences and combinations, so please do try it out!

I’m hoping to break-up the monotone of the opening to bring in more choice like the ending, that’ll be a while yet though.

(Minor) update 29/9/2015: Added a disclaimer page, did some minor clean-up, added elaboration on the different stats on the stat screen. Also made the incomplete route re-route back to the completed path if you pick the ‘training yard’. Working on completing the first Ending available, as well as more on the other choices.

31 Likes
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Not a bad start. The option of pressing your weak claim or just trying to avoid being killed by the other claimants is interesting. Any chance of playing kingmaker, supporting someone else’s claim while ignoring your own?

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This sounds really interesting! I haven’t had a chance to play yet so forgive me, but will we be able to play as a female character?

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For my story, no. Due to the time period and setting, a male character would make the most sense in this case (being an heir to a kingdom).

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I’m being vague so far since I’m basically borrowing bits and pieces from different time periods or settings, even though it’s meant to be a general European setting set circa the Middle Ages. You’ll also note except for Rook/Player Character and the Lord, I don’t really use names. It’s an early draft and everyone’s being called by their titles still in my script.

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You can ignore your own, and ally yourself with the Prince. Then it’s a bit of whether you can keep on the thin ice with him without him deciding it’s easier to kill you. This part needs to be fleshed out more in my head though.

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Since you said it was inspired by GOT I wasn’t sure how realistic you wanted your WIP to be.

Good luck with your project.

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Im definetly going to buy it in my opinion a great plot

you have my support good luck

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First majorish update. One ending is complete, and after receiving feedback and also as I get more comfortable with writing IF and using ChoiceScript, it’s got more personalization and choice at the end.

I hope to make the opening like the way I’m writing the ending, but for now, bear with the wall-of-text syndrome of the beginning.

One major question I would like to ask is this:

For relationships between characters, would you want a clear meter/quantifiable way to see the relationships; or would you rather it be kept ‘hidden’ so you wouldn’t know exactly what pleases/displeases a character.

I find it a bit of a conundrum while I prefer ambiguity myself, but understand it’s tough to remember how everyone reacts at any given time and for gameplay purposes, the meters help.

Edit: Also, is there a very quick way to make jump scenes for debugging purposes, or should I just add in like a quick-jump choice somewhere in first scene so I can jump to new later scenes to test them immediately?

3 Likes
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A good middle ground would be to have it just say how good their relationship with you is (hated’ bad, neutral, good etc) I seen some CoG do that instead of meters.

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That’s possible, though I kinda think labeling the relationship so distinctly is worse.

A lot of potential story twists are relying on ambiguity, and leaving it up to player interpretation.

I might instead make the ‘Relationship’ screen show a summary of interactions between the player and the character, so at least they can keep track of everything that’s happened; and then let them infer how well they’re doing with each character by themselves.

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you realize it is time for you to leave You give him
You need a period after leave.
you see an old and wizened in heavy robes
You forgot to insert man between wizened and in.
Also, I’d prefer a meter that clearly states your relationship, and you should have an option to let players jump to later scenes and test them.

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I’m still experimenting and figuring out a compromise for the relationship issue. I’m wondering if I should make the ‘clarity’ of the meters reflect a stat on the character, like it’s more accurate with higher Cunning due to greater intuition.

Anyway, yeah I was hoping there was existing debug code that lets people select scenes or something from the devs themselves. The problem is some later options require stats from earlier choices, and jumping direct to those scenes might break the choices.

But yeah, it’s frustrating for myself to keep going through to test later scenes. I’m going to install some backdoor shortcuts in the next update.

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i see you have not uploated the game :confused: i hope this game is still in work because i wait for this very hard :slight_smile: and i think it will be one of the best choice of game ever ^^

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Hey, thanks for the interest! Just a combination of graduating and moving back home made it hard to find time to go back to working on this. Hopefully, once I secure a job, and finish my desktop rig, I can get back to writing again.

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i’m happy to hear that ^^

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ow yeah sounds awesome cant wait to try more of this god I love medieval settings.

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I noticed two loops. If you choose to go down the unfinished sections like going straight towards your Lord you are gained a point towards wisdom. But because it’s unfinished you are sent back to that option again. Making it a loophole to infinite points of wisdom

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Noted. I’ll close the loop (or just erase the stat-up for now till the path is complete) when I do the next round of updates to this. Hopefully it’ll be soon!

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Me too. I like your story so far and the mix between cleverness and wisdom. I hope to see more of the story soonish. But I understand how tedious coding can be.

1 Like