Oh, the French!

The most important part of playtesting is knowing what you are testing. For Oh, the French!, it was the atmosphere of the game as well as the ending. I asked on r/interactivefiction for feedback on my story, and even though Reddit is usually a terrible place for it, I got really lucky with one very kind player.

The feedback mostly concerned the ending as the player wanted influence over it and the game was frustrating that. It came on too fast and was inevitable, which felt bad. At first I was dismayed because that was the whole point of the game.

Thankfully, there are no real problems in feedback, only opportunities for more creative solutions. It helped me see that I had created a rude awakening, like throwing open the curtains to a midday sun. What I needed was a slow dawning. The same midday was coming, but gradual is more gentle on the eyes.

So I introduced a finer gradient toward the ending, which I think made the game more successful.

When I started Oh, the French! I had a strong vision for it, but I had two problems. First, since the inspiration was absurdist literature, there was a very real danger of appearing (and becoming) lazy with the prose. I needed a way to make everything intentional and to hold myself accountable to a certain standard.

Second, very early on I was already introducing descriptions and dialogue inconsistent with the vision. I think that's understandable especially when we're writing to solve problems. For example, I noticed I didn't explain an item or a location very well, so I went into the Twine node and added some text.

The words emerged from different headspaces. The inspired prose is from the realm of ideas and feelings, while this other one was more empirical and utilitarian. Both are necessary, but they need to be seamless.

My solution to inconsistent prose in Oh, the French! was a style guide. It was written so that I would have an "objective" reference against which to compare my writing. For example:

• Descriptions cannot contain colors, only black, white, grey, or none
• Characters must be ungendered
• Nouns should always use the definite article (the house, the street, etc.)

So as I was writing, sentences like the following would come up: "The bleak buildings cast a black shadow onto the street." This is something I'd check ten times without noticing the indefinite article. Corrected: "The bleak buildings cast the black shadow onto the street."

Obviously, since this was for personal use, I didn't have to add a lot of clarifications, but it saved me so much time and caught so many inconsistencies that I'll make it a point to have one for every game. This isn't a particular burden for me as I document everything anyway.

The most important part of playtesting is knowing what you are testing. For Oh, the French!, it was the atmosphere of the game as well as the ending. I asked on r/interactivefiction for feedback on my story, and even though Reddit is usually a terrible place for it, I got really lucky with one very kind player.

The feedback mostly concerned the ending as the player wanted influence over it and the game was frustrating that. It came on too fast and was inevitable, which felt bad. At first I was dismayed because that was the whole point of the game.

Thankfully, there are no real problems in feedback, only opportunities for more creative solutions. It helped me see that I had created a rude awakening, like throwing open the curtains to a midday sun. What I needed was a slow dawning. The same midday was coming, but gradual is more gentle on the eyes.

So I introduced a finer gradient toward the ending, which I think made the game more successful.

My solution to inconsistent prose in Oh, the French! was a style guide. It was written so that I would have an "objective" reference against which to compare my writing. For example:

• Descriptions cannot contain colors, only black, white, grey, or none
• Characters must be ungendered
• Nouns should always use the definite article (the house, the street, etc.)

So as I was writing, sentences like the following would come up: "The bleak buildings cast a black shadow onto the street." This is something I'd check ten times without noticing the indefinite article. Corrected: "The bleak buildings cast the black shadow onto the street."

Obviously, since this was for personal use, I didn't have to add a lot of clarifications, but it saved me so much time and caught so many inconsistencies that I'll make it a point to have one for every game. This isn't a particular burden for me as I document everything anyway.