FIAB reveals: I made a game!!

[schneefink]

ficinabox had author reveals. I wrote a Hermitcraft/HGCZ fic, and I wrote a Hermitcraft/Decked Out 2 game!!!

What Needs to Be Done (To Make a Difference), for Odaigahara
2.5k, HotGuy Comics Zinethology missing scene, Pearl & Soup Group & Scar
Summary: The Soup Group is plotting against Hotguy. Pearl thinks about her friend Scar.
Canon knowledge required: Yes.
Author's notes: When I first read HGCZ and got to "What Needs To Be Done" I paused to go "wait, what??" Grian working with the Soup Group? That came out of nowhere. And Pearl plotting against Scar like that? I wanted to see how that happened. So when one of the requests mentioned the Soup Group and the sculk bug storyline it was the perfect opportunity. I think it came out well and worked for what I wanted it to do :)

A Farewell to Rusty, for captainschaos
Twine game with multiple endings, ~9.5k, Etho & Tango
Summary: Decked Out 2 has closed - but Tango lets Etho do one last run in the dungeon, to say goodbye to his buddy Rusty.
A Choose Your Own Adventure game where you control the dungeon run.
Canon knowledge required: Recommended, but just watching the intro to Decked Out 2 is probably enough to understand it. Rusty is an imprisoned iron golem in the dungeon that gives players treasure if they bring him a repair kit that can be found in the dungeon. (I don't actually know how well it works without fandom knowledge but I'd love to know so let me know if you give it a try! That would make me very happy.)

Author's notes: I made a game!! An actual game! I'm delighted.
Interactive fiction has long been on my "would in theory be nice to try one day"-list; when I got a FIAB-assignment that asked for Etho&Tango, Decked Out 2, and said "I love anything interactive, and adore games!!" it suddenly became a lot more concrete. I started actually looking at different programs, quickly landed on Twine, did a few quick tests and decided that I would actually do this.
This is definitely one of the fanworks I made that I'm proudest of, and I'm so happy that people played and enjoyed it.

My original plans were way too big (a run down to level four, both clank and hazard variables, an overarching plot focusing on fae magic and the relationship between Etho and Tango) and when I realized the scope I almost gave up. Fortunately I had people cheering me on and willing to let me ramble and helping me brainstorm, and that gave me the idea for the plot I ultimately went with. I like it much better, and I was especially glad to skip levels 3 and 4 because I didn't really know how to make them engaging (without a lot more work than I was willing to do.)

A while ago on stream Tango talked about how a certain degree of randomness is very important for him when designing games, and there's a lot of it in DO2, so I immediately knew I wanted to have that element too. Fortunately changing things based on a percentage chance is not that hard to do in Twine, so then it was a matter of getting the odds right, especially for the key chances, the deaths, and the clank thresholds at the end. (I even asked LB about probability calculations but eventually decided that was too complicated for what I needed.) I think it went okay; I tested it and three other people tested the game a few times and the results were approximately in line with what I wanted.

I had a lot of fun putting different conversations into various passages as "rewards" for the player making it there, sometimes with pieces of worldbuilding (I also made this a fae AU because my recip mentioned they like that and calling it magic saved me from going too deep into Minecraft mechanics); I hope that makes replaying it more interesting. I didn't originally include a guide, but maybe that would have been a good idea?, so I made one now, at least to the endings.

I had so much fun with this that very quickly after I finished I thought about maybe doing another game. But I'd want it to be a game, more than branching narratives that'd more feel like writing multiple AUs at once. Decked Out 2 was very well suited for this because it already is a great game with random chance events, and I could just pick the elements I wanted/needed from that. I haven't yet had a good idea but I'm confident it'll come eventually. And in the meantime I'm so happy and proud that I wrote this game, and people played it and enjoyed it, feels great :D


This is what the map looks like:

Map

62 passages overall. The ones underlined in red are deaths, the one underlined in blue is the successful ending. (I don't know why I placed the story top to bottom and not left to right… Maybe it felt more natural because it's about going down into the dungeon?)

There are three parts:

Guide to the endings

- (the intro and) Level one, where you have to find a key to level 2. You can't die; the relevant part is only how many rooms it takes you to find one because each room raises your clank level.
- Level two, where the goal is to make it to Rusty. There's two entrances: you can go through the lava area, which means a high chance to die by ravager but if you survive you'll make it to Rusty very quickly (though without a repair kit.) Or you can go through the mushroom area. You can try the spider path but the spiders will kill you. If you find a repair kit in the mushroom area you can go to Rusty immediately, otherwise you'll have to make your way to the water to search either on the pirate ship and/or in the coves, with varying chances to be killed by Willie.
- The final part is the escape from the dungeon. Your clank level determines if and how many vexes will be released, and if they're out they have a good chance of killing you. If they don't you make it out of the dungeon successfully.