A Dangerous Trek

Project Type

Twine Game

Skills/Tools

- Twine

- Creative Writing

- Dialogue

- Branching Narrative

- Choice Design

- Worldbuilding

Duration

May 2024 - August 2024

Project Overview

A Dangerous Trek is a Twine project that I created to hone my prose and branching narrative skills. It follows the Player as they travel through a forest with two companions, both of whom possess strong, impassioned worldviews. The Player interacts with both characters and forms relationships with them, while facing a series of tough decisions. The story makes no judgement on which actions are “good” or “bad”; rather, it is up to the Player to decide that for themself. Read more if you’d like to learn about my narrative development process!

Play In-Browser Here!

Project Details

Inspiration

The initial concept for A Dangerous Trek came from an encounter I designed for my D&D group several years ago, that I continue to use in every campaign I run. It involves some fight in the wilderness between the Players, and some kind of intelligent, yet malicious humanoid creature. At the end of the fight, one humanoid creature remains alive, yet defeated and defenseless.

The Players are faced with a choice: Do they let the creature go, risking it returning with reinforcements and attacking the Players once more? Or do they kill it when it can’t fight back, ensuring no risk of another attack?

In my experience, this encounter never fails to engage the Players. It gives them an opportunity to decide something about their characters: are they the kind of person to kill a defenseless creature to avoid another attack, or not? It also tends to create powerful roleplay between conflicting characters. So, when I decided to make my first Twine project, I knew that I wanted to expand on this encounter.

Goals

A short, 5-10 minute narrative
A story that examined themes of Pragmatism vs. Idealism
Lots of dialogue, so that I could develop my writing skills
At least one major branching choice, resulting in at least 2 endings
Decisions that felt meaningful, and difficult

Constraints

Twine does not support audio by default, so voice-acting and SFX could not be relied upon to deepen the experience. Therefore, the storytelling needed to stand on its own.
No more than one major branch. Twine supports as many branches as you would like, but I constricted myself to only one, so as to complete the project to a strong level of quality in a timely manner.

Pre-Production/Planning

Before opening up Twine, I used a few techniques to lay the groundwork for my story. First, I wrote up Character Bios for the two main characters of the story; Oskar and Janus. The majority of the narrative would be spent interacting with them, so a detailed document describing who they are, where they come from, their likes and dislikes, manners of speech, etc. would be crucial.

Next, I wrote out a basic outline for the plot of the story by hand. It included major story beats, and detailed where the major split in the story would take place. While I did not stay true to this outline entirely, it provided a great starting point for the piece.

Production

Opening

Optional Detail

With the foundation in place, I began to write. I chose to start the story En-Media-Res: in the heat of a fight with the reptilian Raegodan. This works well to engage a Player immediately, while also significantly shortening the amount of time before the first decision is made. This allows interactivity to take place as soon as possible.

During the fight, the Player must choose whether to kill the Raegodan that they fight or to spare it and allow it to flee. Following the fight, I chose to include an argument between Oskar (The Pragmatist) and Janus (The Idealist), which the Player gets to weigh in on. I chose to include this kind of confrontation early in the plot, as it allows the Player to clue into the themes of the story very quickly.

Next, I decided to include a segment in which the Player is free to ask both Oskar and Janus any number of questions about themselves, before moving on in the story. This allows a Player who cares a lot about the characters to learn more about them, while also allowing a more impatient Player to immediately progress the plot to the next beat.

Smaller "Footballing" Decisions

Then, I decided to include a few smaller decisions. None of them change the resolution of the story, but they allow the Player to learn more about Oskar and Janus, while also maintaining a sense of Player agency. For these, I designed decisions to “football” back in on themselves, meaning that they would branch for a bit, allowing the player to explore a one or more divergent passages, before returning to the Critical Path.

The Major Branch

I chose to make the final act of the story start with a major decision. I made the decision to place the major branching choice here, as it allows enough of the story to be impacted enough by this choice that the Player perceives it to be meaningful, while not ballooning out the scope of the project.

The initial version of this branch featured one ending in which another conflict took place, and one ending in which no such conflict took place.

Feedback and Iteration

The moment I had a playable version of the project, I started sending it to my peers and mentors to play, looking for feedback. I received some advice on how to clean up the prose, and how to make the dialogue feel more powerful through more “stage directions."

I also found that the majority of Player’s were siding with Janus (The Idealist) and some even saw Oskar (The Pragmatist) as a villain. This was not the intended experience. More Players choosing one path over another is fine, so long as those Players felt like the decision was difficult and impactful. So, I changed some of the circumstances regarding some of the decisions in the story to reflect more positively on Oskar’s perspective. When I sent the new version out, I saw more Players align with Oskar’s pragmatical perspective.

Players also told me that the ending of the story felt abrupt and anti-climactic if you made certain choices (that most Players were making). So, I added in an additional conflict along this branch, mirroring the major conflict on the other branch. This resulted in more powerful endings for Players.

I iterated on the writing and branching several times to increase the flow, impact, and agency of the story, until I was happy with it. Then I decided to work on the presentation. I added in a themed background, and color-coded names to increase readability. Once it looked good and read well, I decided to publish it for the world to see!

Conclusion

A Dangerous Trek was an extremely fun project to work on. I learned a lot about branching narrative, and sharpened my writing skills a lot. At the end of the day, I managed to meet my goals for the project and produce something that I’m proud of!