Hey gang. I'm a senior game design student at RPI and I've spent the past semester working on projects in Unity and Python as a designer and programmer. My real love for games, however, is in their unique ability to carve portals into new worlds. With that in mind, I'm going to use this jam to go back to an old idea and just jam out some fun writing.

A long while back I wrote a not-great short story from a killer prompt: Cyberpunk x Southern Gothic. The short story used some pretty cringe-worthy slavery metaphors and borrowed way too much from Asimov for something that was supposed to be Cyberpunk. Years later and I remember the story and prompt and the image of a worn out neon southern metropolis resonates in my mind despite the story's weaknesses, which means that there's a spark of something there that I want to revisit. Twine seems like the optimal way to write some interactive fiction in that setting and I've been wanting to try it out for a while, so the stars aligned and I'm taking a shot at it.

The Game Itself

The year is 21XX and you are a Preacher who has been called to serve the Omnichurch of Iron City, Georgia. Arriving on a Monday, you have just under a week to write a sermon to be preached to well over 10,000 people live and broadcast to over 1 million. You'd better make a strong first impression.

In the days leading up to your sermon, you will have a chance to go to various locations in the city and talk with individuals who might just inspire something in you. Think of it as the inverse of a traditional "your choices matter" RPG: the people you speak to and learn from will affect the material for your publicized sermon.

A lot of this writing will be off the cuff, fast and loose, and quickly developed breadth-first worldbuilding. Characters will have their own lives to get back to, but everyone you talk to has a chance to give you the seed of a new piece of the topics you can deliver to your congregation. I'm really looking to have fun with this more than anything else, and to get some more genre writing under my belt.

I'm excited to be a part of this jam!

hey there! awesome to see a vet take part and try something new! (:

this concept sounds super cool, and as someone who loves cyberpunk AND interactive fiction, i'm suuuper interested in seeing how this turns out. good luck!!

So! A little bit of progress done, I've been sharing time between this and helping a pal out with their game for this jam. We're learning Twine 2.0 (Harlowe) together and it's been a blast.

Implemented some simple gender picking stuff with cycling links on page 1, and have been giving some thought to the flow of the story overall. Right now I've got it broken down into 7 days, with the option to go out (meet people) or stay in (study) each day. I think I'm going to expand the options a little bit in one of two ways:

1. Make the things that one can do each day have more variety. Do you walk the streets and mingle or do you go to a place to volunteer? When you stay in, do you pore over your texts or do you sit in silence (or take some supplement to meet your maker more directly)? This option still keeps in place the idea of picking one thing to do each day.
2. Keep the options simple, but allow for more than one thing done per day, a morning activity and an evening activity. I'm considering this one because it feels a little bit more true to the style; cyberpunk settings thrive on the nightlife, and you're not going to see the heart of the city during the day. This could end up more focused, as I'd be limiting myself to two settings only (in the church and in one outside location) but I don't want to lose the sense of scale.