Starting the Game - iPhone Game Blueprints - page 6

gameplay mood, character's design, backgrounds, and props. For example, you can
display a large portion of text about a spaceship crashed on a planet, or just show an
image of the crash at the game background, displaying all the aspects graphically.
Not words but the behavior and image of a character can show the fact that it is a
negative character. Some cracks on the surface of game object can drop a hint that
the object is breakable. Design is an important part of a narrative system.
Dialogues are a good part of the storyline, especially for games with some RPG ele-
ments or for adventure quests. They must be short and clear. A small portion of hu-
mor can increase their attractiveness. The main problem with dialogues is the ne-
cessity of a voiceover; the game needs professionally recorded and mixed voices to
sound cogent enough. This problem can be solved by introducing graphic speech
bubbles with some text instead of real voices. This can make localization easier too.
A sound effect with some balderdash and indecipherable syllables can be added,
and sometimes that approach can be very funny. The dialogue system will be ex-
pressed better in Chapter 7 , Adventure , of this topic dedicated to adventure games.
Game development is a knotty process, so you have to accept the fact that the plot,
and particularly the story, will be in a state of constant transformation. Some ideas
will be dropped for a variety of reasons (for example, they can be unrealizable from
a technical point of view or test players will not like them) or your experiments with
the game will reward you with new ideas. It is important to know that the gameplay is
usually more important than the story; bad game mechanics can ruin a perfect story,
so don't worry about some ideas if they do not work well. Try to find new ones in-
stead.
The funny part of the storytelling is the inside jokes or Easter eggs. Sometimes, this
is a way to resolve tiny problems with the story. For instance, there is a bunker in
the game that needs a name written on a wall. The name can be constructed from
your name or it can be an allusion on your favorite movie (remember the Lost TV
series, for example), popular Internet memes (recall the famous phrase, a phrase in
broken English, "All your base are belong to us"), and so on. Not only can small text
be a tribute to something but also level compositions, a character's name or look,
and even a sound design.
There is a very popular in-joke in the movie and video game industry; when a char-
acter dies screaming, a special sound effect is used known as the Wilhelm scream .
Few people know this, but the same scream is used in more than 200 movies. Don't
forget that it is always pleasant to make hidden references to other game projects