Grim Home is a Twine game that I have put on hold for the time being. It was made on a car drive to see a memorial light show at the University of Redlands for my brother, who passed away in November of 2020.
Originally, I wanted to make this project with a strong visual component, either 2D illustrations or 3D models. Unfortunately I am not a talented visual artist and, since I was writing this game on a car ride, I couldn’t Google any bugs or reliably make any assets. So I settled with a Twine prototype because a) I’m very familiar with the ins and outs of Twine and b) I feel slightly more comfortable with my writing skills than my illustration skills.
I tried to add small quality of life features to help prevent players from retreading the same passages. I did think that some passages were important “hallways” for them to return to, but I tried to make the text largely skippable after the first read through. My main concern that the player would feel stuck in the game with no out. (Any purgatory comparisons are completely unintentional.) I tried to add text that would clue players in to when they had chosen the “right” answer to each decor selection (there is some reference to a glow coming from G. Reaper) and the option to edit that piece of furniture or decor disappears from the prompt list.
In the future, I would try to streamline the editing process so that players don’t have to navigate through the “look around” page every time they want to edit a single thing in the room.