Killing A Doctor

A few weeks before making this game, worlds collided, Twin Peaks and Pokemon Colosseum. Both have pieces of background music that give this tasty noir vibe. I was inspired by them to make my own noir tune, and when the time came for me to make a visual novel, I knew the song needed to find a place in it. 

The story for the game is based on real life events, with groups of people/countries being shrunk down to an individual sized scale. My games are beginning to relate to each other to tell a bigger story and that’s a pretty cool feeling. 

Much like real life events, I wanted the player to have some agency, but not too much. And complete agency would lean too far from the visual novel medium (for me). We have agency in our own lives to inquire and create, but characters’ fates are destined (I’m talking here about Detective Isabel Isaiah). It definitely reflects a certain hopelessness that I’ve been feeling, which I hope in future games I make is gone.

The first iteration was a bit heavy handed in its references, and abstracting some of the characters and moments hopefully makes it feel more like satire and less like the author (me) just telling the player my opinion.

Overall I feel pretty good about this. It feels like a complete game, and I can very much be a perfectionist so overcoming that and feeling closure is a good feeling.

On the technical: I tried to make sure that my sentences were short (three reasons). 

1. It helps keep a player’s attention. 

2. It helped guide me to practice writing concise dialogue. 

3. If it was too long, the dialogue would overlap with the button on the dialogue box.

This game uses the fungus visual novel tool, really easy to use and I highly recommend.