It has become an annual tradition to participate in a family game jam over the past three years. Thus far, these game jams have coincided with the Global Game Jam. For 2015, we created Going Up, our first work of interactive fiction.
It has become an annual tradition to participate in a family game jam over the past three years. Thus far, these game jams have coincided with the Global Game Jam. In 2013, we participated at an official site. However, for the past two years, our game jam has been held off the record, although following the time and theme of the Global Game Jam.
For 2015, we created Going Up, our first work of interactive fiction. It took about 10-15 hours to make (who needs all 48?). We tested out an open-source interactive fiction system called Fungus. This system requires no programming whatsoever. Fungus imports directly into the Unity editor, where everything is handled there. It is relatively easy to snap together storyboards for games based on branching decision trees or point-and-click adventures. Fungus is in active development and could use more features to support more robust games, such as hidden object games. Also, I personally like to code and have more control over my system, so it wasn't my favorite way to make a game. However, I think it could be useful for non-programmers or people who are using Unity for the first time. Besides Unity and Fungus, audio contributions were made by Freesound.org (Creative Commons Attribution licensed) and Stratkat (works previously entered into the Public Domain).
In Going Up, the player is briefly introduced to the scenario of heading to the top floor of a building on an important day. The elevator breaks, leaving the player wondering what to do next. Following is the game's solitary interactive scene, which presents a puzzle of sorts. By interacting with the elevator, the player pieces together the story and eventually arrives at the destination. Overall, the story is brief, vague, and metaphorical in nature. I'm not sure how clearly anyone will interpret, especially since it can be experienced in any order.
You can download Going Up for free and play on Windows PC. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I have no relation whatsoever to Fungus, Unity, Freesound.org, or Stratkat. I found them by chance on the internet and lawfully incorporated portions of their work into Going Up.
This article was originally posted to GameDes.in.
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