Post-Mortem

This game was first inspired by the complex feelings of survivor’s guilt, especially tied to accidents and death before adulthood. My case of this guilt is not nearly as direct as in this game, and it still hits hard and at random. It made me get to thinking: what if I could turn that experience into a game, but from the departed’s perspective. I could provide a unique view of what that guilt looks like from the outside. I don’t know if it turned out to be therapeutic or just interesting to make, but I was sucked into writing it whenever I got to work, and I think it’s reached a good finishing point.

 When I first started on this game, I wanted to have the protagonist visit three different friends and see how their lives changed in the wake of the death. Midway through I cut two of them for two reasons. One: I was inspired for Ronnie’s path more than any other. And two: given the extensive writing and pathways I put into Ronnie’s path alone, doing the others would have been way too time consuming and would have made the game longer than I wanted it to be.

I initially had the vague notion of adding music to the game, and sound effects. Then I learned the pains of trying to get Twine to work well with audio. Absolute links in Harlowe 3.2.1 were not working with the music I wanted to add, so I had to switch from a ‘play in browser’ format to a ‘downloadable’ format and use relative links. I renamed my html to ‘index.html’ and placed it with an audio folder inside a game folder. Then I archived it and uploaded it to the site. This and the twine code I used to call and loop the music was made a lot easier thanks to a site called Harlowe Audio Library. It uses simple code to both load tracks and call them, and even has code to test if your audio is looping or working properly.

 I was not able to find and add sound effects as I would’ve liked, as most didn’t quite fit the atmosphere or tone. Fortunately, I feel the background music more than fills the silence. And who knows, maybe an update will come with sound effects, if I find just the right ones.