Act 2 from On High

July 27, 2018

Work continues apace on Sleuthhounds: Cruise and I’m now well into the shaping of the second act of the game. It’s been a tricky process as this part of the game opens up from the more linear first act. With the second act delving more into the investigation, getting the ball rolling on the “buddy story” of Homes and Ampson, and introducing optional side investigations there’s quite a lot of juggling that’s been happening.

When I develop a story, be it in writing, comics, or game design, I work towards getting a first draft done as quickly as possible. Once there’s something on the page it becomes much easier to shape and strengthen the story. At that point I can see what story bits I need that I don’t have, what bits I have that I don’t need, and what bits I have but that are in the wrong place. That’s where shaping comes in. I start to shuffle all the different parts around, adding and removing as needed, until I get the narrative just right.

In the case of the second act of Cruise this process is a little more complicated. It’s not just about making sure the Homes/Ampson story is as strong as it can be it’s also about integrating the game challenges in ways that make sense. On top of that are the stories of all the other characters that players will be investigating. With all of this going on, it’s very easy to not be able to see the forest for the trees.

To start with I pulled together a bunch of ideas for the story, the characters, and the puzzles without necessarily paying attention to how, or even if, they’d fit together. Once I got to a critical mass point of those ideas it became possible to start organizing them. I took a step back to think about the act as a whole to make sure things were still tracking as they needed to in order to fit the broader overall story of the entire game.

The key motivation in the second act is that Ampson has inveigled herself into Homes’s investigation even though Homes doesn’t really want her there as he much prefers to work alone. From there, the core of the act is for Ampson to prove her value in the investigation and win Homes over. There are several major plot progression points in that journey and those became the main points around which I’ve now structured everything else in the act.

With the “spine” of Act 2’s story in place, I could then delve down into each of those main points and start to arrange all the other ideas I had for the act in a way that made sense. For example, one of the characters being investigated is a retired army colonel. He has no tolerance for the ocean and yet he’s taking a cruise. Ampson and Homes have to find out why to determine if he could be behind the series of unfortunate events that have been plaguing the ship.

Prior to looking at the overall structure of the act, I was uncertain where the colonel’s story fit in. Once I had the overall structure in place, it became very apparent where the colonel’s story went. It also became apparent how Ampson could relate to the colonel’s story in order to assist Homes, thereby tying back into the main focus of the second act.

In similar fashion I worked through all the different threads and ideas I had for Act 2 and developed a much clearer picture of what needed to happen and when and where the puzzles fit into things. At a high level, the structure for Act 2 looks something like this:

[High level breakdown of Act 2.]
High level breakdown of Act 2.

Each box in this diagram represents either a key story point or else an entire story thread. For example, the blue boxes along the top mark the progression in the storyline for Homes and Ampson. Some of these relate to events and story threads going on in the investigation that are separate from Homes and Ampson. These are represented by the grey boxes in the diagram. Although these threads are separate from the Homes/Ampson relationship each one needs to have a moment in it where Ampson can shine. These are represented by the purple boxes.

This high level diagram of Act 2 looks deceptively linear, but in fact the second act is quite non-linear for the player. As a for instance, each of the grey boxes underneath the second blue box represent different story threads that can be investigated in any order. Players can even start one thread, switch to another thread for a while, and then come back to the first thread. Add to that the fact that within each of these different story threads there are tasks that can be performed in any order – which aren’t depicted at this level of detail on the diagram – and Act 2 becomes quite non-linear. By giving players the ability to experience these different threads in the order they choose it helps to create player agency and means that one player’s experience of the game will be different from another and so, hopefully, more personal.

The high level diagram makes everything look nice and neat and well-polished. However, some things in Act 2 are still quite messy and need additional refinement. It’s one thing to have the high level structure, it’s another to get all the detailed moment-to-moment bits smoothly ironed out so that everything flows appropriately and is internally consistent. It’s been a lot of prep work to get to this point on Act 2, but very soon the actual game scripting of the act can begin in earnest and that will pin down all of the final story details.