Because Project Week was cancelled, I decided to make my own project to replace it: making an RPG.

While writing the script of the RPG, I ran into a problem: the beginning was filled with a lot of exposition; the audience would get bored. When I looked at the openings for other games and looked more into how to open a game, I was advised to try and hook the audience within the first five minutes of the game and to try and get them playing as soon as possible. Most of the time, game developers do this by employing media res, or starting in the middle. However, if we decided to start in the middle of the story, the audience would be confused and I felt it would be harder to tell the story. So, I decided that it would be best if we had the main character start without any NPCs so that exposition through dialogue would immediately be off the table. Likewise, we could do a “random” encounter with a demon and have it quickly established that demons would be the player’s “enemies”.

I think I had trouble with the beginning because I was not used to this type of medium. I’m mainly used to writing short stories, and I can explain the character’s thoughts and actions and past through the narration. However, a game (or at least this type of game) does not really have narration. I will have to keep this in mind as I continue writing the script. Games rely more on indirect storytelling (literally show not tell) in order to keep the audience/player interested.