Getting closer to a plot

Copyright: Gaming-Gears

Another week, another blog update. Yup, I have more news on Ralin, the game I started working on about two weeks ago. Two weeks doesn´t sound like a whole lot, but wow, I learned a lot during that time. So what did I write during that time?

Well, I did a first draft of the plot for Ralin. It´s a bit basic right now, but it´s all the team needs at the moment. I approach text writing and plot development with a certain amount of the “fail faster” -mentality. This means I develop something really fast and then test it with the other team members. If they enjoy it, I can put more energy into it and really develop it further. This sounds like you might loose a lot of time, but believe me, the opposite is true: Developing a very detailed document only to have it be refused by the team because you misunderstood something very basic is a lot tougher on your time budget, since you´ve put more time and energy into a document like that.

However, this approach only really works at the beginning of the development. Later, I will need to work directly with the level designer and I won´t be getting as much feedback as before. This is also due to the amount of text that has probably been produced by that moment: There won´t be enough time for everyone to read everything later on. Right now, all we have is a general story treatment, a plot outline, some dialogue and scroll-texts. Something useful I also started with this week is the creation of a story bible. It contains pretty much every character and location created for the game and describes it with some detail. It should make things easier later in the development.

Well, this is pretty much all I can really talk about right now, since a lot of things are still shifting. Meanwhile, you can check out the indiedb-page for Ralin, where more concept art and some information has been posted during the week. You can follow me on Twitter and like me on Facebook. Gaming-Gears can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.