Individual reflection

I searched for inspiration in my daily life, hoping to find something meaningful not only to me but also relevant to society as a whole. Then I thought of one of my past school experiences. In cases of school bullying, was I the victim or the bully? It feels like I played every role at some point. As I grew older, I thought I had finally let it go, but had I really? It seems not. So I felt a deep, irresistible need to make this the theme of my project. Through the process of creating this story-engine game, I not only learned how to use the software but also came to understand the importance of logic in game design. This time, I chose Twine to build my game. As I dug deeper, I was surprised to discover that this engine, primarily known for presenting story-driven games, can also use code to create highly interactive mini-games. This was a big surprise for me, since I had originally thought Twine could only display text-based narratives. It greatly enhanced the playability of my game.

What went well is that I was able to brainstorm and come up with a clear theme. The story had meaning while still keeping the game interesting. The most difficult part for me was figuring out how to assign different friendship points and evil points to each choice in order to influence the final ending. I did a lot of calculations and simulations, needing to consider logic, reliability, and the warning effect I wanted to achieve. In the end, I decided to calculate friendship using a point system, while the bullying events are assigned and managed through conditional branching with logical operators such as “and,” “or,” and “else” to control how different choices lead to different outcomes. I originally wanted to combine three different narrative structures, but I couldn't figure out how to merge them so that the outcomes can correspond to the different combinations of content players randomly choose in each playthrough, this gave me a lot of brain-burning work. However, overall, this project increased my confidence in designing interactive stories and gave me a new understanding of how simple tools can still support complex and meaningful gameplay.