'The Attendant' - Postmortem

Yo, wooo, postmortem time!! Time to get in around the guts of this project.

I haven't really done one of these on a game dev project, so we're going back a couple of years to my Masters when we wrote like 300 word critical commentaries on work we were submitting. I enjoyed doing those back then, so hopefully I'll think the same after this. 

I'll start with something that jumped out around halfway through the project: I need to improve how I plan the non-linear sections of games. I think one thing that can almost paralyse development on interactive fiction is trying to adhere to various pieces of advice that people on twitter offer out. That's not to say the advice isn't helpful, it's just that they might often conflict and compromise the direction of the game. Should choices matter? How much control should the choices offer? Can you just make a super linear twine game or does that defeat the purpose of interactive fiction? There's competing philosophies on this but as always (and it can be so easy to forget) it's project/situation dependent. Some of the dialogue choices lean a little too heavily into railroading for my liking still, but I felt far more comfortable writing interactive dialogue this time compared to previous projects. I think material change to the body of the story (and some dialogue options) using if statements were far more prevalent here than in the past and it felt like the opportunities to use those came to me much more naturally.

To use an example, the final dialogue section with April felt effective in the way it was formatted. It would have derailed the push towards the end to have the conversation play out over multiple choices, rather it felt much more natural to start with April putting on a brave face and allow some interaction before having the player trigger one of two different linear conversations played out through click-reveal function for an additional punchiness. I was somewhat worried about formatting it that way for the sake of consistency, but as my friend reminded me, if it serves the story better then there's only one choice.

Speaking of, I'm really thankful to my friend Dylan for his feedback, as it turned out he was the only person I really had any feedback from throughout development. He's thorough, tough but fair, and always explains his reasoning - along with happy to donate time he doesn't really have to help creative work be the best it can be. Feedback from other source(s) midway through the project that had been offered ultimately wasn't forthcoming in the end and there was a real sag during development because of that. That experience would have been pretty handy, which was frustrating but it is what it is and it certainly wasn't out of malice - in fact it was probably a useful and unexpected setback I had to rise above and push towards getting the game ready for release, rather than potter around waiting.

Another aspect I think I'd initially considered was to have the light in the cabin dim as you play through represented via the background dimming behind the text. I wasn't sure how to do it and ultimately was satisfied with the violet background I went with, but having played through George Larkwright's 'Those Days' recently, that was perhaps a mistake as he made great use of this feature. Similarly, I played through Jenna Condon's 'Cut Them Off' which was wonderful (go play those two games!). They used images to great effect as they partitioned the screen, supporting the narrative content. It's something I'd potentially like to do with the aeroplane window images in 'The Attendant'? I was hesitant during development simply because of inexperience so it might be quite cool to go back and change the UI and layout further down the line - possibly with the text too to make it pop a little more. Next time I plan to have sound, it was something I toyed with for this game but ultimately I felt like it probably would have been a superfluous addition for this particular project.

As far as the story goes, I was pretty happy with how it turned out relative to what I was aiming for. One of the things set in stone was the final line and the two potential endings. That certainly helped development. It wasn't super rigid in that I would have been happy to change if I felt it would have served the characters more honestly or been more interesting for the player to engage with but I felt both co-piloting the plane or rejecting the opportunity to do so were fitting symbols of the choice about chasing your dreams or being content with the status quo (is she? or is she lying to herself? Hmmm). I considered having a sort of standardised introduction text as you go to liaise with each passenger that Evie would use to attempt to engage with them professionally but that didn't feel particularly interesting. 

The characters worked well enough, I think Neil could have possibly been folded into air-con guy. I felt that air-con guy (who was named Nelson but it felt shoehorned to force his name into the types of interactions you have with him) could have possibly been cut - but I did receive some positive feedback on him. I felt he didn't really contribute a whole lot beyond an enjoyable tantrum in the first set of interactions, but people deal with trauma/grief/fear in myriad ways and I always remember when one of my best pals died how I nearly lost it because a slightly drunk guy kept offering me his seat when I was happy standing haha. So, yeah. One of the reviews said they really dislike children in games/films but they loved April which was cool. It became apparent that her relationship with Evie was sort of an emotional core to the whole thing so she really took centre stage. Initially I'd planned to have just the three characters you interact with that sort of represented 3 different stages of life and allow Evie/the player to reflect upon their interactions, but 3 didn't feel realistic enough for a flight - even if it was half empty and later at night. So Neil and Sadie came into existence. I enjoyed writing the interaction between Sadie and Evie, it felt like they built a good rapport whatever direction I felt like taking it and I thought it was important to portray someone at a similar stage of life to Evie who was taking the decision to make a big change. 

At first I'd planned to have choices or a mechanic which measured how successful you were at easing the passengers fears, but that felt a bit too rigid. It was more important to me to have these reflective moments for the player/Evie and try to leave passenger happiness open to interpretation. Whether that was air-con guy's regret, Jane's fear of death and reluctance to speak to her sister, April's fear about being abandoned by her father when she gets home/separation from her mother, Neil's outlook on funerals/death and Sadie's decision to pursue her dreams. I will say I think my approach to character's physical description really didn't work. I tried to take a minimalist approach, including snippets of details when they carried out an action - rather than just Evie standing and evaluating them like a specimen but I'm not sure that I found the right balance there. Not to my liking anyway. 

Conversely, I was relatively pleased with my environment description. I could have improved some of the micro details, like the feel of the environment and related it to the macro themes of the game but broadly speaking I was happy. Prose is something I haven't written a great deal of after university - primarily due to learning how twine works and because I enjoyed scriptwriting so much during my Masters so I've generally only entered scriptwriting contests since. So it was great to flex that muscle again. 

All in I'm pleased with this project. The response has been really humbling for something that I conceived and wrote in the midst of a really tough spell of the pandemic where I was basically stifled in my teenage bedroom due to lockdown being imposed before I could get back to my flat. It's the first IF piece I've produced since last year, with the others predominantly being created for game jams. There's various structural and writing technique improvements I'll take with me into the next project I work on and ultimately that's what this is all about, continuing to learn, identify mistakes and hone my skills while creating stories that resonate with me - and hopefully with others too.