[Interactive Narrative] Initial Ideas

In the project, we have to decide whether to develop the interactive narrative for web or iOS. I have thought about what platform to use and am initially leaning toward a web based platform. I'm planning on doing a parallax style animation with no text but instead expressions and emotes similar to the early Final Fantasy and Golden Sun games.


The main story will be slightly abstract, but is based around the transfer of a small blue sapling-like plant between various people. Depending on the decisions of the player at certain points in the game, the plant will either leave or stay with a certain person. There will be several of these actions that dynamically cause the plant to end up with multiple people, hopefully around 6-10 each game, with maybe a possible total of around 15.

The game will begin with the 'main' character finding the plant in the middle of an opening in a forest in which all the recipients live. Depending on the actions the player takes, the plant will then be taken by another creature, for example a bird sweeping down to snatch the plant just as the main character digs it up from the ground.

I'm planning to have multiple routes, but for all routes to eventually lead back to the plant being in the original main character's possession.

The parallax style will allow the scene to appear stylistic and animated without having to render out every frame. For example, while the game is awaiting the first decision while the character is digging up the plant, the long foreground grass will be slowly moving to the right, along with slight adjustments in the scene to make it appear as if the camera is marginally rotating around the player. There will also be the distant view of birds moving in the sky, hinting at a possible outcome of a player's decision.

I am planning to animate in Flash using Adobe Flash Pro CS5. Flash is a very widely supported format with virtually all modern computers coming with Flash pre-installed. It is now also supported by most handheld and tablet platforms, including iOS.