198 - Branching Postmortem

Developer diaries about creating Neverending Nightmares.
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matt
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198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by matt »

In this video, I share my thoughts about how the branching narrative worked in Neverending Nightmares.

-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

I thought the openness of the three different endings was one of the strong points, so I don't think collapsing them all down to one single path would have been the way to go, especially when a lot of other criticism was about repetition of areas. Then again, you could have controlled the experience more that way, and maybe won over some of the people who didn't like the endings they got. Although Wayward Dreamer is probably my favorite, even if it may be because it was one of the last endings I saw from playing the early builds, so I got to see it within the context of the other ones.

Phew man, it's gotta be tough to make decisions like that. I personally love branching paths as I tend to check out everything, but I'd imagine the majority of people aren't going to seek them all out, especially since some of them require some hunting. That seems to be the norm for most games, a lot of gamers look like they fall into the "one and done" category.

Did you track any stats like that to give an idea of how many people went and at least looked for another ending? The Steam achievements page shows only 5.8% of players unlocked all endings, but I don't know how much info you can parse from that, as global achievements stats seem to be really low in all games, making me think it's tracking everyone who owns the game whether they've played it yet or not.
ranger_lennier
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by ranger_lennier »

I at least like having some element of searching through the levels, though it wouldn't necessarily have to be looking for multiple exits. And you weren't making players repeat a whole lot of content, since after beating the game once, they could see exactly which levels still had unopened paths, and skip straight to those.

I was surprised that you described a "right" and "wrong" path through the forest. I managed to find both exists by first taking the bottom path every time, and next taking the top path every time, backtracking if I reached a dead end. It never felt to me like a particularly complex maze, and I didn't notice any reason to favor one path over another.
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matt
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

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My current thinking for the next game is to just do one narrative path and focus on better storytelling. Part of the problem with the story in Neverending Nightmares was that we didn't have characters - Thomas and Gabby were symbols representing things. I didn't want to give them any sort of depth or personality because I felt like it would give too much.

I didn't really think about this early on, but people often ask me what the objective of the game is, and it is a tough thing to answer. I usually say the objective of the game is to wake up, but I'm not sure that is the type of answer to look for because you never do anything explicitly to wake up. In that sense, it is kind of like a haunted house simulator where you take a journey through a path and eventually exit.

I think if I focus on a narrative (even if it is fractured and told through nightmares), it solves a few problems.
1) I can set up motivations for nightmares that makes sense. Thomas doesn't really have many motivations for doing anything other than maybe finding his sister in a few nightmares and drinking milk. I think I could have solved some of that by having Thomas say things like "I gotta escape this asylum", but the character was supposed to be lost and confused, so that didn't fit.
2) While I like our closer looks and other interactions, they are all scary stuff, in Latin, or backer portraits. I think giving them additional nuggets of story as a reward for exploring can help you feel like you are accomplishing something (it's hard to feel like you accomplish anything as Thomas, which was kind of the point, but...)

While it is possible to do this, you may be asking why one narrative? Basically, that will make my life easier. It's easy to morph things into different nightmare endings

Perhaps the game will lose some of its nightmarish feel, but I think it'll be easier for the game to sink its hooks in you if you have more story bits pushing you forward.

I reserve the right to change my mind though. :)
ranger_lennier wrote:I was surprised that you described a "right" and "wrong" path through the forest. I managed to find both exists by first taking the bottom path every time, and next taking the top path every time, backtracking if I reached a dead end. It never felt to me like a particularly complex maze, and I didn't notice any reason to favor one path over another.
That certainly is one way to find the different endings, but at least in my mind, I thought people would miss Gabby in the "wrong" sections where she didn't appear. Whoops.
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
ranger_lennier
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by ranger_lennier »

okay, that makes sense.I guess I lucked into both exits before I had to think about it too closely.
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matt
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by matt »

Yeah, I think it's one of those things that makes more sense to the developer than anyone else. If you don't know to expect Gabby at the start of every forest segment, then you won't miss her if she isn't there. Whoops!
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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gagaplex
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by gagaplex »

I got to about 4 to 4.5 hours in all to unlock everything (including the other path leading to the middle final level). That actually confused me a bit, as I was expecting the middle level (or the ending sequence) to change a bit depending on how you got there, but I didn't notice anything. I will agree that putting the branching points so close to the end of the levels (without checkpoints within the levels) was not optimal. Branches overall I consider a great idea, but the placement is important. Also, when I first encountered the veiled girl dolls with the flowers that you can look at more closely, I figured finding all of these would be one of the branching conditions or an achievement in itself or something. I liked the detail put into those, but I was a bit surprised nothing more came from that, I guess.
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matt
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by matt »

If the branching points were close to the beginning of the levels, then depending on what you did, it could be the playtime for the game would be even shorter... :-/ I think for something like that, it'd be better if the nightmares were shorter and there were more of them, or you could jump to a specific part in the level, but both seem like complicated solutions.

For the veiled dolls, we were hoping the intrinsic rewards of seeing the creepy dolls would be enough to motivate people rather than the extrinsic motivation of achievements. The implementation of achievements are often weird because they are providing motivation to do something that might not otherwise be interesting. We were hoping that the doll faces would be interesting enough just like looking into the cells was hopefully its own reward in the asylum sections. Perhaps we erred in that regard.
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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evilkinggumby
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by evilkinggumby »

I think having the branching portions coming later is ok, I agree with Matt having hem too soon into things would make for a lot shorter game with less play time.

I will say that when I played through the game I at no point felt like I was making decisions and altering the destiny of the nightmares. In reading a guide to get to all the endings I realized I stumbled on the ending I got mostly by a fluke. I got to the outside of the Asylum and even walked to the edge of the abyss and tried to interact with it in a few spots, nothing seemed to work and it wouldn't let me walk off so I re-entered the asylum and so "chose" a different path.

So really the Choice i was actually TRYING to make didn't work and so I ended up choosing a different choice I didn't even know was a choice. I'm not sure that's how branching paths are supposed to work...

I think some indication that you were reaching a pivotal point would have been useful. Even if it was just the main character talking to himself briefly to say "Should I take a leap of faith into the pit, or go back inside?" or " Do I follow her or go a different way" or something simple. By giving no real indication that you were making choices that would alter the next nightmares you visited, and potentially the ending you got, it feels like you really only wanted the players to get one of the many random endings and whatever it was, that was it. When I finished the game and saw the "branching path" screen it actually frustrated me to think that never once did I feel like I was offered or able to choose a different path, so the other endings were trolling me. I personally was not intrigued to go back and search out the others (because frankly I had no idea where I would look or what I should have even done) nor did i know if the other endings were worth any of the effort.

If the player was not part of the kickstarter or following any of the devs blogs, is there clear indication of multiple endings and player choice in how they branch out within the framework of the game itself? I know you discover it after th first playthrough but at that point it's like telling someone " oh hey now that you have wandered aimlessly through a dangerous and horrible wasteland for several hours... you missed tons of key options that would have changed all kinds of things about your experience and brought you to other end game scenarios! Please Try Again!!"
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matt
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Re: 198 - Branching Postmortem

Post by matt »

think some indication that you were reaching a pivotal point would have been useful. Even if it was just the main character talking to himself briefly to say "Should I take a leap of faith into the pit, or go back inside?" or " Do I follow her or go a different way" or something simple.
This was a deliberate design decision. Making a choice gives you control. I wanted to have the player to direct the narrative without giving players actual choices. The entire game is about dis-empowerment. While you may say it was a bad choice, I'm happy with it in terms of what I wanted Neverending Nightmares to be. Perhaps we can do branches as a stretch goal, but I think just focusing on one playthrough and ending is going to be challenging enough given the predicted budget we'll have (based on sales of Neverending Nightmares and a successful kickstarter)
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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