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Idea 1: Personalised room

Personality quiz that populates “your room” as you answer questions.

Wide room, scrollable. A visual representation of one’s subconscious personality. Implying environment and world.

Save and share your room with a name and a password.

  • Four paintings, variable sizes and positions.
  • Windows, variable sizes and positions.
  • Wall panelling material.
  • Three overlayed sounds: ambient, possibly “diegetic” music.

Idea 2: Collaborative room

Everyone contributes to a single room, words that are frequently used in the room become features of the room. There is a live chat from which words are pulled.

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In light of my musings while reading The Garden of Forking Paths, I have decided to modify my chatbot idea and possibly incorporate elements of my other two ideas into it.

Randomness, I believe is key to creating an interactive experience that is rich and possible to execute in a short time frame. It is humanly impossible for one to account for all the possible decisions made by the player and offering only discrete options that lead to discretely branching outcomes will inevitably cause the player to be aware of the fact that their decisions are leading them down definite paths, ruining the illusion of choice.

However, I must also think about managing all the information players add to the database and how the player experiences the game. Instead of having the player type sentences into a text input field (which can be mechanical and dull), I have been contemplating other easy ways by which they may convey something personal but not private: a link to an image they like, a word they like, answers to a personality quiz, “select which one(s) you like most”?

I just started learning AJAX today and if I am able to finish learning it in time, I could create a real-time feed of these submissions, and this could be extremely exciting.

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  • All puzzles are linked to one of four topics, equivalent to a branching narrative: the player gets to decide which thread to pursue first (a “thread” being a series of puzzles that must be solved in sequence as each either unlocks or is key to solving a subsequent one), even though all four “routes” are available for solving all the time.
    • Four seasons?
    • Signs of the zodiac?
    • Four elements?
  • Clues in plain sight: A list of news article titles that are actually mini-riddles; they will share a common theme so that the player can figure everything out by finding the relationship between them. For example, each riddle might refer to a cardinal direction–north, south, east, west. One might use the sequence to solve a different puzzle, like moving across a grid.
  • Hidden clues: the player must do creative things to discover them, like run some JS code in the console. Risky, because this might tempt them to read the source code.
    • Could use simple code to replace clues.
  • Encoded clues: messages or directions converted to less direct forms, like converted to binary and then encoded in black and white squares, like a punch card.
  • The marquee at the top of the page serves as a consistent source of notifications and updates on puzzle progress. It informs the player that they’ve completed particular milestones.

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The player creates the story by playing. There is no fixed storyline.

Act 1

  • Beginning: The player is looking at the page of clues. They are unaware that that they are clues–it looks like a regular website.
  • One of the clues is obviously visible, but the player is not sure how to use it.
  • Inciting incident: The player makes a breakthrough; one clue makes it clear how to go about solving the website
  • First turning point: Completing the first puzzle causes a dramatic change in the website layout, or the site reveals new things that were previously invisible.

“Act 2”

  • Obstacles: Four big segments, corresponding to four humours, for symbolism’s sake (throwaway symbolism is commonplace in web puzzles)
  • Lots of small clues to decode
    • Translating to other fonts
    • Message encoding: binary: text <-> visual format. hexatridecimal (base-36): numbers <-> text. Wingdings: text <-> visual and symbolism
    • Increasingly complex actions–clicking in the right order etc.
  • Twist?: You find yourself visiting a different website to find the answer.
  • Disaster: Entire website “crumbles”–divs disappear as you type passwords into a series of seven blanks
  • Crisis: Only the background is left. Not sure what to do.
  • Climax: Realisation that there was a clue inside an element that you did not think held a clue–something that recedes because you assume it’s just a part of the site design
  • The URL takes you to the Final Clue, which looks completely different from the site you were on originally. It gives you a word.

Act 3

  • Wrap-up: To solve the entire puzzle, you have to go back to the first page and select a new option, given by the Final Clue, on the same webpage.
  • End: A leaderboard? A nice text story that summarises the journey?

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mockup

I’m a big fan of point-and-click puzzles and web-based puzzles like notpr0n that involve extensive research and several clues that are seemingly meaningless at first glance, but gain meaning when one is able to relate them to the puzzle-solving process.

The idea here is to hide these clues on a single innocuous webpage.

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I have a taste for the ambient and more optimistic; I don’t like depressing themes because god knows real life subjects me to enough of that.

  1. My semester in America: allowing others to access the photos of my trip in a nonlinear fashion to experience it as I did, with the feeling of having a wealth of choices lain in front of one.
  2. A big puzzle that leads you across the night sky to the “goal” via a set of clues: Interactivity emerges from the player’s clue-deciphering process.
  3. Web design-based game: an intriguing website with hidden things, simulating the experience of escaping a room or finding a treasure. The web divs are like the cupboards and drawers that one “opens” (interacts with) in search of items. Some knowledge of web formats.
  4. A game that grows as more people play it: Maybe they leave some information, they input something, add something, and the programme mixes that into the content.