This just in, Diane Kohler’s writing a blog post.  

I am a member of the Design and Narrative team for our upcoming game The Hierophant. “What does that mean, ephemeral voice in my head?” I’m glad you asked dear reader, pop a squat and I’ll elaborate.

In the beginning, my job was structuring the narrative, building the skeleton of our then-unnamed tarot murder mystery. Now luckily I had a lot of material since our team decided upon the characters, gameplay, and setting fairly early. I took those elements and formulated how they would be arranged. I’m sure anyone on the Small Fry Media team would recall my feverish whiteboard scribbles at the time (complete with smiley and frowny faces). Eventually, we found a solid structure of how each murder case would go and I translated that into a story tree. 

Afterwards, it was onto writing the script, designing interface concepts, and storyboarding scenes. When I say “script” it’s not the kind you’re thinking of. Our first challenge in narrative was structuring how a game script would look. It involves a lot of loops and colours, the likes of which Toucan Sam would say is overkill. However, it communicates how dialogue choices intersect and play out. 

Now for challenges, the biggest and most glaring was accounting for game feasibility. “Scope” is one of those words I think about when placing a spyglass on a sniper rifle. That is to say, a lot of narrative ideas were shot down with “scope”, but for good reason. It’s vital to account the logistics of labour with each second of screentime. The differences between writing for a game and writing on paper are insurmountable. In a game, the narrative must harmonize with player interaction whilst utilizing the visuals and dialogue. It’s the adage of “show don’t tell” balanced with “kill your darlings” (of which Rachel also mentioned in her blog post). Through hefty vetting and narrative exploration, our project matured and refined. It was a difficult process, but ultimately our best ideas made it into the game script. 

We’re nearly finished with the script and it has been a spectacular journey. Working with Rachel and Brian was a real treat. Each of us brought a certain Je nes sais quoi to Cannon City. At the end of the day, I’m proud of our accomplishments. I’ve learned a lot from writing outside of my comfort zone. I’d wager I’m going to learn more from our tarot murder mystery as production continues.

Now if you’ve read the other blog posts (which you should), you know there’s been a lot of passion gushing from this project. For me, the passion has gone into writing the script and designing the structure of the game. Is it a lot of work? Absolutely, but it’s also been fun. I’m lucky enough to work alongside my dedicated and talented peers. I couldn’t ask for a better dream team in art, design, tech, sound, narrative, marketing and production. Believe me when I say, it’s difficult to find a group who can both encourage and challenge each other without spoiling morale. Not only is everyone skilled, but extremely supportive and fun to work with. Small Fry Media has some tough and talented cookies working in the kitchen. Truly, I’m elated and grateful to be a part of it. 

Thank you for reading this blog post. Feel free to follow The Hierophant and support our upcoming game, we look forward to showing you our finished product!    

That concludes my blog post for the week but stay tuned for more!

~ Diane