Tick Our Time Away

Narrative Designer | Writer

Overview

Tick Our Time Away is a text adventure murder mystery game set in Victorian England. The player takes the role of a college student who posses a pocket watch that can transport him back in time, he must use this power in conjunction with investigative techniques to solve the murder of his professor.

What I did:
- Helped drive the concept, plot, and systems of the game.

- Wrote and edited expressive dialog to create unique character personalities, especially focusing on the main character and his foil character.

- Created callbacks and a modular ending monologue to reward player choice.

Accomplishments:
I presented the game with my team in front of other students, faculty, and industry guests. Our game won four out of the five awards voted on by the audience, including “Best Characters” and “Best in Show”.

Academic Project
Roles: Narrative Designer, Writer
Genre: Mystery, Drama, Text Adventure
Engine: articy:draft X
Platform: PC
Team size: 5
Production length: ~6 weeks

Process

Pre-production

  • After we created a plot outline, I contributed to designing gameplay that incorporated investigation and time travel.

  • I designed intentional limitations to the time travel system, keeping it engaging and within scope.

  • I then contributed to creating the internal scripting logic.

Text document where the system was hammered out.

Flow chart of Act 2, showing the system in use. See full image.

Description and casting of main character.

Prototyping

  • We cast each character as an actor which made writing them in a unique literary voice easier.

  • I primarily worked on writing the main character and his foil character, ensuring both of them were memorable.

An example of how the world reacts to the character.

Production

  • I spearheaded the main character’s arc, pushing him selfish and immature, to responsible and selfless.

  • I maintained a grounded world and writing style through juxtaposition between the main character’s self-important attitudes and the world around him.

  • Writing more grounded characters that have to deal with him created humor and kept the character likable.

Production cont.

  • I showed hostility between the foil and main character through argumentative dialog and the main character suspecting the foil despite having little evidence.

  • I made the foil’s branching dialog the most difficult to navigate which created a greater sense of hostility and rewarded players that passed it.

  • I ensured that smart player choices were rewarded with useful information and character conflict resolution.

Flow chart of the foil character’s dialog branch. See full image.

Polish

  • Players want to feel like their choices matter, so in addition to the investigation, I implemented several narrative callbacks.

  • I established variance in the timing that the callbacks were delivered, with some taking nearly the whole game.

  • I wrote a modular conclusion monologue where the character’s arc could be resolved, and several events could be referenced, based on the player’s actions.

Choice near the start, and a callback at the end of the game

Flow chart of modular conclusion. See full image.