“The Day I Missed My Walkies” — A Postmortem
Introduction
I recently finished my very first game, which is something I’ve never thought I will be able to say! Yet, here I am, after a lot more hours spent on my short interactive narrative/point and click adventure than I expected, and it is safe to say that I am forever changed by the experience. I always saw a great barrier to entry when it came to game design, let alone game development. Programming is something I have tried to learn countless of times, yet I never got to a level where I felt confident in my skills enough to attempt making a game. This all changed when I was introduced to Fungus — a tool designed to help creators realise their games without the need for programming — and I was instantly excited. Still, the project did not go without its challenges, and I intend this postmortem for my future self to read when I make my next game (which I am already eager to jump into).
HOW IT ALL STARTED
I did not immediately think of making a game inspired by my dog, Scilla — a 2,5 year old rescue pup — but from the start, I was interested in exploring the theme of “lost motivation”, which is something I often experience in my work, and is a theme in some of my favourite narrative video games (a great example is Night in the Woods). Still, I wanted to make a game that is personal, and is rooted in the things around me. I started with visual brainstorming, exploring themes I was interested in, alongside references I could use:
I thought about mechanics I liked in games — such as point and click — and themes, like mystery, and how I could bring these together coherently. During these early brainstorming sessions, however, I was often interrupted by my dog, Scilla — who never seemed to be affected by any lack of motivation. When I worked long hours and she grew more and more impatient to go on her walkies, I observed her as she played with her stuffed Penguin toy. So I wondered, what could be in her head? I imagined she would be the heroine of her own story, and the Penguin would be her sidekick. From there, I just had to think of the type of story I wanted to tell. I looked for inspiration to literature and video games, where the main characters experience the same story from different perspectives. The dog, the hero of her adventure, is in a mystery mashup of Wallace and Gromit, whilst the owner — the Hooman — is in an Alice in Wonderland type of dream of self-discovery. In the end, whether it all happens in a dream, or whether it really happens as the Dog sees it, should be up for interpretation.
Two other inspirations for my story were The Starlight Barking (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31964.The_Starlight_Barking) which is the much-lesser known sequel to 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. This was one of my favourite books as a child (I preferred it to 101 Dalmatians) and it is about a star that makes every living creature fall asleep, except dogs. This idea, together with dreams, helped me make the decision that the owner of the dog will be asleep. However, I also wanted to animate the stuffed toys around my dog — similarly to Toy Story — so that there is a whole other world happening around the human. In the end, however, I have decided that the stuffed toys won’t gain consciousness (as in Toy Story), but are “possessed” by otherworldly entities.
Narrative Choices
As I have never written fiction before — let alone interactive narrative — I have decided to choose a more linear approach, with fewer branches. I didn’t want the project to get out of hand, whilst I also wanted to control how the player experiences the story. In the end, my final Fungus project has the following structure:
There are five main plot-points in the story: The Beginning, The appearance of the Penguin — who is the main guide of the Dog — , an explanation of what went wrong in the World, a Final Showdown with the main antagonist, and an epilogue. Player choices don’t affect the overall flow of the narrative, however, there are two slightly different endings — albeit followed by the same epilogue.
Character Development
There are four characters in the story, each with their own role:
- The Dog, who is our main connection to the story. Whilst the player is not necessarily the Dog itself, they make decisions that influence the Dog’s behaviour. The inspiration for this character is my own dog.
- The Indifferent Penguin, who provides most explanations of what is wrong with the world, and is the main helper of the dog. The main inspiration for the Penguin is an existing toy we have at home. The personality comes from two sources: this article about an Indifferent Penguin https://www.scotsman.com/news/scots-hilarious-tweet-about-bagpiper-and-penguin-goes-viral-1460102, and the Penguin from Wallace and Gromit.
- The Evil Brussel Sprout, who is based on another toy my dog has (see picture included), became the main antagonist. His personality is based on The Grinch, and his transformation is similar.
- The Hooman, who is based a little bit on me, but also all dog owners, and John from Garfield in the sense that the Hooman has no idea what is going on.
Creating Art
As I am not an artist and never learnt drawing, this step was very challenging for me, and took a lot of time to complete. I wanted to create a whimsical look reminiscent of cartoons and comic books from my childhood, such as Wallace and Gromit or Garfield, and I wanted to make all the assets by hand. In the end, I have achieved some of it (and it became easier the more I drew), but I had to use some third party assets as I started to run out of time, and other parts of the game needed more attention.
I’ve started making characters in Krita first, by importing a photo of my dog and tracing over the lines. As I had no images of her in the exact poses I wanted to use, in the end, her images are made out of a collage of 3–4 photos, drawn and coloured on them.
This first image was the easiest to create, and I used a screenshot of Scilla in the window. It also gave me an idea for the opening of the story, as she often spends her time looking out, waiting for us to come home, or just observing people on the street:
The next two images were a lot more challenging, as I needed to cut out the head from a different picture, and position it on the previous drawing. Then I redrew some of the lines, and coloured over the whole image. Then I repeated it with the bottom-half of the dog from another picture, creating a full pose:
The Penguin and Sprout were a lot easier to draw, and I didn’t need to trace anymore as I could draw them just by looking at the reference. I started taking artistic liberties as well, and using more inspiration from the characters’ imagined personality:
Environments took longest to draw, and were the most difficult. I didn’t know how perspective worked, and composing the images was a cumbersome process. I took a similar approach to how I drew the dog, creating collage images and then tracing, then modifying them.
What Went Wrong
- Spending too much time on creating art. This was mainly due to me not being an artist, and not knowing about drawing concepts, or even shortcuts available in digital drawing tools. Using Krita was very cumbersome with a mouse, and it took me a long time to realise that I can draw better on even a 2014 iPad! As a result, I had to use some third party assets for the clickable items in the game. This was quite disappointing for me as I wanted the game to have a hand-made feel, however, it enabled me to spend more time implementing features in the end. Still, in the future, I would like to learn more about drawing and create all my art by hand in my next game.
- Spending even more time fine-tuning animations…I have spent whole days trying to fix iTween issues, some of which did not even make into the game as I just couldn’t find the right setting. In the end, I switched from iTween in Fungus to the Unity 2D sprite animation tool, which made a great difference. Still, I only did this very close to deadline, resulting in quite a large chunk of lost time.
3. Being overly cautious with branching. This is something I think I should have explored more, even just to make two more significantly different endings. I struggled with ideas to make them equally powerful, however, and in the end, decided to remain more linear. I hope that if I write more stories in the future, I can incorporate more complex branching into my narrative.
4. Not exploring difficult themes deeper. Two themes in the story are loss of motivation, and also the dog’s past on the streets and shelters. I touched on these themes, and tried to accomplish some emotional content. However, to keep the whimsical feel, I did not explore these themes deeper. This is because I was afraid to lose balance between the emotional and comical moments. I feel like if I were a more skilled writer, I could have done a better job at exploring these themes further, whilst also keeping the overall feeling of the game as intended.
5. Not playtesting soon enough. I think this is a trap a lot of beginner game developers fall into. The first time someone played my game, a lot of things didn’t work the way I imagined them. What helped me realise this (and eventually overcome the problems) was the LudumDare game jam, which I had to participate in, and which overlapped with the making of this game. Playtesting early on, however, would have saved me a lot of extra work.
6. Not building/exporting soon enough. This was the biggest issue and difficulty for me, builds going wrong all the time! It mainly originated from messing up the resolutions in the Fungus Views. I used the wrong canvas size in Krita, and then it all went wrong from there. I had to use supplementary art to make unwanted edges in the camera disappear, which reaulted in a lot of extra work. Luckily, I had to build another game for LudumDare which made me realise these issues soon enough before deadline to avoid panic. Still, even in my finished builds, some of the edges are slightly off on different platfroms. One example is the Penguin’s speech bubble, which seems to be working well on Windows but is slightly out of frame in the WebGL build.
7. Not using Variables to their full potential. It took me quite some trial and error to figure out how to make a functional inventory system, but it is not the most elegant solution. Fungus has lists built in, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to use them. Therefore, I copy-pasted a lot of my IF statements, which I am not proud of…
8. Sound design. I ran out of time and had to use asset store sounds. This is slightly embarrassing with as degree in sound art…
9. No Fmod integration. I really wanted to use Fmod to make interactive music, but ran out of time in the end.
What Went Well
- Despite now seeing many imperfections with the art I drew, I can also see how some things improved between the first drawings and the last few. In the end, I think the overall look of the game achieves what I set out to do.
- Whilst I expressed the lack of depth in the difficult themes, I believe I managed to keep the balance between comical and emotional moments well.
- Chracters. I am really proud of the characters in the game, both visually and developing their personalities.
- The inventory. Whilst it is definitely not the most elegant solution, it took me a long time to make it work and it is fully functional!
5. The hidden object mini game. As I had less branching, I still wanted to make the game more interactive. I used the clock-searching mini game to give a goal to the player, and to tie interactivity and narrative together. I also used the short snippets of text when clicked on objects to help the player imagine the everyday life of Dog and Hooman.
6. Music. Whilst I was disappointed that I couldn’t figure out how to use Fmod with Fungus, I managed to “hack” an interactive-like system for the music by composing layers which I manipulate with Fungus commands. These layers are used as Soundscapes, so they can plat simultaneously with a Music track in Fungus.
In the end…
Making a game was a journey for me that resulted in more self-discovery than I ever expected. I see all the mistakes I made and I am already eager to try again. I never thought I will make a game, let alone to immediately want to make another.
