The Walk a Psychological Game

The Walk
A Psychoanalysis Game
Created for the NaNoWinter Game Jam

Created by me.
Play-Tested & Proofread by the magnificent AntiquedFae

Download from MediaFire 77 mb (version 1.5)
updated 08/19/15

Have you ever wondered what was going on in your subconscious? Well, now you can, and without the ungodly exorbitant price tag of a professional shrink.

Welcome Test Subject!
-- Let's go for a walk through your subconscious with the help of a guided meditation of sorts. Using 'point and click' and what you write about we can examine all sorts of fun things that are going on inside your head.

For your convenience, what you select and write down is all recorded in a Journal that you can examine whenever you like. (Just remember to save -- often.)

When you're done, the system will tell you what it all means, and unlock the secrets of your mind!

Just keep in mind that it's all in good fun!

The Inspiration behind Fiction Quiz

...A Quiz Game is an interesting premise to use a Visual Novel engine. What motivated you to do something like that?

 -- Renpy Game-maker

The original motivation to create this was to Test a different form of Game-Play.

I've been haunting the Fallen London online game by FailBetter Games, and pondering on how they set up such a Story-as-Game system, and wondering if it could be reproduced with the Ren'Py visual novel engine. By taking it apart and just looking at the pieces; (Story Nexus), it was pretty obvious that Yes, Ren'Py could do this, and Easily. Too easily in fact. It wouldn't even challenge Ren'Py's capabilities.

However, I didn't want to reproduce the Story Nexus style of story, I wanted to take their form of story-telling in a broader direction.

Keep in mind that I'm a Story-Teller FIRST, and a game-maker LAST.

To do this, I needed to know their Base Design; the Core Model that Story Nexus was using; their source of inspiration. What made them think of making a story-game this way? Why didn't they come up with something more like Ren'Py -- which, to me, is far more logical direction to take with a story.

Ren'Py = 

• Story 
• Individual Character Dialogue
• Pictures 
• Sound 

Game-Play = 

• Story Options 
• Point Flags. 
• Condition Flags

This was clearly Not the model Story Nexus was using.

-- After a year of playing their games, and digging through their story-crafting essays, I figured out their formula.

StoryNexus = 

• Loosely connected one paragraph Story-bits. 
• No Character Dialogue
• Very Limited Imagery
• No sound

Game-Play =

• Select from List of Individual Story-bits:
• Condition Flag + Story-bit 
• Repeat
• Repeat
• List of Optional Story Choices: 
• Point Flag + Story Bit
• Repeat
• Repeat
• Ending Story-bit + Condition Flag.

-- In other words...

StoryNexus =  

• 1+1 = Chapter One, 
• 2+2 = Chapter Two, 
• 4+4 = Chapter Three, 
• 8+8 = End

This pattern was hauntingly familiar. I had definitely seen this model before in a far simpler form, but where?

I quite literally, jerked awake from a dead sleep and sat up in bed with the answer. Quizilla.

Once upon a time, back before Quizilla was bought out by Nickelodeon, I even made my own Quizilla Game. This one, in fact: "What kind of Fiction should You Write?"

Quizilla's formula:

• 1+1 = Results 1, 
• 1+2 = Results 2, 
• 1+3 = Results 3

Change this to....

• 1+1 = Flag 1, 
• 1+2 = Flag 2, 
• 1+3 = Flag 3

-- and you have Story Nexus.

To test my theory, I took all my old research, updated and refined all those old questions and results, and plugged them into Ren'Py.

It Worked. In fact, it worked way better than the original game. With Ren'Py, I could layer on the flags; some as additive points, some as condition text, then add screens to show the results and totals of those flags.

This was something Quizilla wasn't capable of, but Story Nexus was. However, Story Nexus doesn't have the Music and Graphics capability that Ren'Py always had.

What all this boiled down to was a new way of Thinking in terms of Story as Game -- for me anyway.

And there you have it.

What kind of Fiction should You Write?

What kind of Fiction should You write?
A Literary Quiz Game

Rated: PG 

Quiz & Graphics by me!

Ever wanted to know what Genre of Fiction
Your writing style suited best? 

In this game, there are 16 questions plus a bonus question in case you get a tie score, with 13 choices per question that add up to tell you which of the 13 genres your style of writing matches the closest. In addition, there are a pair of Scoring screens to show the results of your choices, and the strengths and weaknesses of your selections.

Consider this a writing tool to show you what areas you're good at, and which areas could use a bit more polish.

The game is short -- really short. It takes maybe 20 minutes to play and the graphics are fairly minimal. Even so, be prepared to click a lot.

Download from: MediaFire
(This is a Folder. Click on the file to download.
Once you unzip it, go into the folder and click on the .exe icon to activate.)
Version 5.0!

800x600
47 MB

Music:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johann Strauss Waltz Medley
Played by the USAF Band

Preview on YouTube!

Screenshots
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Introduction:

There are 13 questions plus a Bonus Question if you get a tie score.
This is ONE of the questions.

As you can see, there are plenty of answers to choose from. 

Yes, I realize that the text is a little small.

With an 800x600 screen size, it had to be that small just to fit all of it on the page.
~~~

This is 1 out of 13 possible Results.

There's also a statistics page so you can see what you scored in the various genres.

 And an Additional Page that shows the strengths and weaknesses of your selections!  

In all honesty, this was an experiment, a test-drive if you will, for setting up the coding to use stat scores to gain a specific result. I just ended up actually making a fully functional Renpy game out of it.
.

Small as this game is, I hope you find it entertaining.
.

Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Interested in how I came up with the idea?
The Inspiration behind Fiction Quiz.