April 26th-29th 2013 :: Theme: Minimalism
Ludum Dare 26 — April 26-29th, 2013
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Broke Down is a Twinestory about tearing shit up and getting off on it.
The basic structure is super minimal, but you can increase the prose by several levels to uncover different layers of story. I used a number of Leon Arnott's macros, which are documented in the source.
FYI, this game contains profanity and violence and a conversation about scat. If you are familiar with my work you are already aware of my affinity for profanity.
I plan to release a post-compo version because I'd like to add more interactions. The best routes are the ones I wrote first, so if you want a recommendation I'd say go town, then casino, then ho, then geek, then kill everybody. YMMV.
Update: postmortem: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/04/30/broke-down-postmortem/
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 100% |
| #126 | Mood | 3.56 |
| #157 | Humor | 3.07 |
| #334 | Overall | 3.40 |
| #492 | Theme | 3.60 |
| #494 | Innovation | 3.19 |
| #638 | Graphics | 2.93 |
| #826 | Fun | 2.69 |
| #1045 | Audio | 1.48 |
Comments
This is amazing writing. I always read the things twice. Savor it baby.
Awesome stuff.
I'm a tad disappointed after The Cards Never Lie.
While the expanding text gimmick sounds interesting, in practice it's only a bother to read the same text repeatedly with some alterations - most of which are just filler text which don't really add anything to the experience, in my opinion. Perhaps it would be more interesting if all hidden text actually added something and could not be displayed when you first read the text - for example, requiring you to have read certain other parts to 'unlock' the hidden text. As it is now, I eventually ended up just expanding everything to max size every time after a certain point, so I wouldn't have to reread the same thing thrice every time.
The plot feels very disjointed, chaotic and random. While to some extent this is justified by the subject matter, it feels like the story is distorted beyond what the protagonist's perspective would provide - like if the world was a dream and simply had no logic. Even with the protagonist's mental state it would make sense for it to feel like one continuous story, but rather it seems like a collection of separate snippets, as if you are skipping three pages for every page you read in a book.
Wow, that was pretty awesome. Haven't seen a text game that actually made me play multiple times like this.
Very unique visuals and concept for a Twine game. How much of the custom flair did you create yourself?
This is probably the coolest twine game i have ever played. The writing was amazing and the way that the text was divided into sections and vague really fit the theme. The colors and the fonts were also very well chosen. The game was super beautiful in general.
This is awesome! Super stylish and the writing is perfect :)
Everyone, thank you for playing and thanks for your comments. If something doesn't sit right, feel free to leave a note about that. I try to absorb it all so the next thing will be better.
@protensity - The CSS was mine, but the custom macros were Leon's. List in the postmortem:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/04/30/broke-down-postmortem/
I felt the need to play through each scenario to dig up more details about what was going on. Digging is a strong motivation for me in interactive fiction, so I liked the addition of a scale of detail in the writing.
I wonder what it would be like if you only unlocked higher-detail text modes as you complete the story multiple times. So that maybe the bare minimum is all you get that first go, and it blossoms out from there.
Really interesting to see how the meaning of the text can change as it's given additional detail. I love the colour scheme - very Mirror's Edge
Loved switching between verbose and minimal. Extremely well done. I loved how it all just 'fit' when switching between the two styles.
Such a sad little robot. At least that's my theory ;).
Expanding/collapsing the story was an interesting idea. Seems like it'd be a fun exercise in stripping down a story to its bare essentials. The story itself was intriguing but never seemed to reveal a lot. Occasionally there seemed to be some spacing issues (playing on Google Chrome), but overall it was all done well. Good stuff.
Well, not the kind of games that I like, but I can see that it's good. And very well into the theme, too. Congrats!
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I liked this a lot. The writing was interesting, giving me just enough to catch my interest but not spelling everything out. Also very well designed for interactive fiction. Nice work!