As of now, I have restarted my project twice! The first time was back in March just before I went into full development of the game, and the again in August after I completed the first build.
Restarting the first time was a bit of a no-brainer, because I hadn’t technically started work yet. I’d written a detailed treatment of the story and outlined all the major choices and events in the game, but I hadn’t written a single line of code or drawn a single character.
But the second time I restarted, I had already completed writing the game and the only assets outstanding were a few unique animated cutscenes and the music. All the characters and backgrounds were drawn, all the writing was completed… you could play the whole game with that build.
I don’t know if you’ve been in such a situation before but it’s really demoralizing. You’re going from a mindset where you’re in the home stretch and you’re looking forward to fixing some bugs and putting on some polish, and the next thing you know you’re back at the starting line. It sucks.
So what triggered this second reset? Well, when I first started developing this game, the tone I had in mind was something dark. I was thinking of movies like The Crow, Hard Candy, and Constantine. I mean, my game is about a ghost trying to get into heaven and a young suicidal Antichrist, so those are obvious places to start.
But immediately after completing the first draft, I did two major things: I started writing the Steam page for my game and I did a playtest and survey with some friends.
On the Steam page, I was forced to think very carefully about how I would frame the game and what it’s key selling points are, and I found myself wanting to pitch the game differently. I wanted to sell it more like a 90s slacker movie. I just thought this concept was more appealing to my own tastes!
This aligned with some feedback I got from my survey, where a recurring theme was that my game was too dreary and depressing.
Improving the story
I started simplifying the story to a base pitch, and this was what resonated with me:
The ghost trying to get into heaven and be accepted by the angels is basically a high school outcast trying to fit in with the cool kids.
I loved this idea (plus it hits close to home hahaha!), and it helped tighten everything about the story. Maybe it’s oversimplifying it, but I think it’s a good foundation.
You ever seen one of those fake trailers where they recut a horror movie and make it sound like a rom-com?
It’s something like that, except in this case I honestly feel the story works a lot better as a slacker movie. Nothing about the main story has changed, but just the tone and some of the characters have been rewritten – and more scenes have been added.
To really show you the extend of which the story has been bulked up, here are the scene outlines of the first and second drafts.
I really like the new scenes too. They give the characters more time to develop their relationships, and the world feels fuller. Most of the old scenes were heavily rewritten or dropped altogether.
Expanding the world
With the breathing room afforded by the bigger story, 6 new characters were added too – a 46% increase in total cast size. Among them is Mr. Yesterday, a newly-created best mortal friend of Gloom, and Joh’teolath, a new antagonist that is totally based on some assholes at work fictitious.
These new character come with 4 new backgrounds too. Between these new assets, the game world is fuller and more colorful… Well, maybe not colorful cos as you can see, I wanted to up the “goth” factor with the new outfits.
All in all, I’m very excited about the new version.
But that said, I probably wouldn’t want to restart again. It’s a very tiring experience to start over, it’s delayed my game by months (I originally intended and was on track for an August release!) and more importantly, I don’t want to end up one of those serial restarters who never complete any projects.
How I could’ve done better
I think something I could’ve done to have saved time was maybe write my Steam page at the beginning. My initial design docs and notes had the story outlines and all, but I didn’t know exactly how I was going to market the game. I didn’t really understand its identity.
Had I put more thought into it sooner, I probably would’ve come up with the 90s slacker movie inspiration earlier and I could’ve started this second rewrite before getting so far in the first version.
I’ll admit, working on the marketing stuff is tiresome (and I come from a marketing background). You’re making your game, and you want to spend all your time coding or drawing art. You don’t want to write promotional material.
But it’s important! Like writing the key takeaway in a movie review first, you should try to nail down the marketing pitch because this will help keep your game design on point. You’ll know what you’re supposed to do and how you should present it, which will save time and effort later if you try to backfill that shit into a completed game.
A marketing pitch is not your plot summary
Far too often, when people ask what our game is about, we give them the plot breakdown. Your pitch is not your story, but what your game feels like!
Flappy Bird was an incredibly viral game, right? But imagine how you would market that? Would you write something like: “A bird is trying to fly through the gaps of some pipes”? Of course not, that wouldn’t get anyone’s attention.
You’d probably want to write something like: “Prove that you’re better than your friends in this frustratingly difficult game where each session could last only seconds!”
A pitch may not be exactly the core identity of your game, but I find that it’s a better start to find it than your plot outline. And any way to help you better understand your game is worth trying, because a lot of missteps can be avoided once you truly understand what it’s about.
Neo Tegoel Games 