Teddy the Turtle

• 

  Characters

• 

  Wordle

• 

  Sketches

• 

  Tree

Inspiration

The inspiration for the video game style came from the Oregon Trail. We wanted to create something that we were confident in our ability to finish. Other choose-your-own stories such as the Goosebumps book series, where great points of exigence occur, drove our idea of the core concepts of the story design.

What it does

The game itself is an interactive story. The player makes choices that will either expose their character and/or affect the outcome of the story. This game is very experiential, reading heavy, and a bit scary. It is to be played multiple times.

How we built it

We started the hackathon by brainstorming story ideas and learning about the IDE we decided to use. The language, while not being well known in any industry, we chose it due to how uniquely fitting it was towards our vision. We essentially built a large tree stemming from the start of the game to branches of possibilities only unlocked by player interaction. The choices themselves needed to feel real and representative of those engaging with it, as well as include a bit of developer humor. All in all, we created something that we not only find immense value and pride in, but something that will hopefully touch the hearts and minds of others too.

Challenges we ran into

Due to our inexperience using this niche coding language, were ran into a couple of bugs when trying to create complex structures, such as reoccurring plot lines. The hardest part of this journey was not in the creation of the code itself, but rather the story. We spent most of our time work-shopping and rewriting scenes to add continuity and healthy progression throughout the story. As some parts of our project became repetitive, we relied on our programming experiences and the Harlowe documentation to provide automation when possible.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Making the game playable and compelling is obviously the most rewarding accomplishment we can think of. We are proud of going above and beyond to create strong characters, outcomes, and the occasional nods to our inspirations. Thank you to all of the play testers and dictionaries who helped us along the way.

What we learned

The coding language we used was new to us in almost every way. While it has a familiarity to CSS and JavaScript, language we have used before, the interface itself was graphical and heavily dependent on the story elements themselves. We learned that within any coding language and/or environment, as long as we have the documentation and the will to look for the best functions, we can achieve anything.

What's next for Teddy the Turtle

We are thinking about finishing the game. A lot more details can be fleshed out, so are excited about taking Teddy the Turtle to a new level.

Built With

• css
• harlowe
• html
• javascript
• twine