RORY LYONS - TEMPORAL TURMOIL

TEMPORAL TURMOIL

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The goal for this twine project was to create a puzzle game scenario where the player has to figure out the correct sequence of events that must unfold in order to escape a crisis. I chose a sci-fi setting for the game where the player is a pilot alone on his personal ship cruising through space.

At the beginning the player wakes up and steps out into the main hallway of his ship. The player is then presented with several locations they can choose to explore. At each of these locations there are various things the player can engage with which affect the current state of the play through. Once the player has explored a certain number of locations a warning message will appear forcing the player into the ending sequence of the game. There is very little choice in this sequence as the ending you get is determined by your decisions during the exploration phase of the game. The player will find themselves presented with disaster until suddenly a strange machine in their ship activates seemingly sending them back in time to the beginning of the story.

Narrative Structure

The overall structure of the game is that of a time loop. A large inspiration for this project was the game ‘The Outer Wilds’. Similarly to how that game functions, the player must figure out how to successfully break out of the time loop. Within the time loop, the game is split into two sections. The first section mostly resembles the open map narrative structure in which the player is presented with various areas that they can somewhat freely explore. After the player has explored a certain amount, or performed a time consuming action, the game bottlenecks and begins the second portion of the game. This section more closely resembles the time cave narrative structure, although the player actually has virtually no choice in this section as the ending they receive is entirely dependent on their exploration in the first portion of the game.

This is achieved through the use of state tracking. Various actions inside the game result in a variable being set to true for that particular loop. For example the player can choose to put their jacket on while exploring the kitchen area. This then provides the player with access to their key card which allows them to explore the storage bay area of the ship. These variables are all reset at the beginning of a time loop with the exception of one. The strange machine located on the ship is the device which facilitates the time loops that the player experiences. Therefore it is possible to save certain information into this machine to have access to it in later loops. The player must perform this to successfully achieve the good ending.

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