Introduction
The Threshold came from a couple of ideas. The first being: I wanted to make a dungeon crawling game with character development similar to the Persona series where after each dungeon, you learned about the characters you assisted and their lives. The second being, I have a difficult time grappling with the concept of death. I thought perhaps making a game where people worked on their own coping with death, it would help me understand it as well.
The premise would be: You were an assistant of Saint Peter. He would task you with assisting someone who just passed away. He would shepard you through a door to someone who just passed. You would meet them, hear their story, then assist them to relive their lives to pivotal moments or moments of regret to ‘fight their demons’ then once they were at peace, they would move on and you’d be given a new person to assist.
I was picturing a variety of ages – older women who had a lot to unload, children who didn’t understand what death was, and 20 to 30 year olds who left in the prime of their life, and others. The goal was to provide an experience of how different ages and demographics looked at death.
I knew I did not have the skills to craft the story that I wanted to tell. From the beginning of development, I knew I wanted to hire writers to assist in telling this story. I wanted to be able to tell them, “I want XX type of character with YY problem, can you give me a couple of pivotal moments to put into a dungeon that they can work through”.
From the gameplay perspective, I was hoping to have these story characters fight alongside the player as they experienced various life events that formed who they are (similar to what Soul Hackers 2 did). The player would continue to get stronger with each dungeon, but each new story character would be at level 1 or 2 then ramp up as they fought through their problems culminating in the final fight where they would go against themselves (similar to the Persona 4 dungeons).
When hiring writers, I tried to look at price (since I was funding it out of my existing job), but also different cultures and experience levels. I ended up working with 3 different writers – a college student, a writer out of India, and a local award-nominated writer close to where I grew up.
Production Process
I had crafted a handful of characters that I would like stories made out of. I would then talk to the writers to give the characters to the ones I thought would handle it best.
We had a Discord server that I would provide weekly updates for work or listen to feedback from the other writers.
When I thought a story was finished, I would give them a new character to work through.
That was as far as it went. Once the writing was finished, I moved on from the project. Since the project was not released, it could be considered a ‘fail’ but I learned a ton in the process that wasn’t necessarily gamedev related.
Challenges
There was a lot that I ran into during this process, most of them self-inflicted.
Scope – Again, totally my fault – I way over scoped this project for a small studio. We should’ve been aiming for a fun 3-15 hour game for a JRPG dealing with the concept of death. Not 100+ hours with a full calendar year with lots of different variations and places to pick up more stories.
Lack of really knowing what I was doing – This was a big one – I had an idea of what I wanted, but articulating that into clear cut steps and deadlines did not happen, as a result, timelines slipped, people missed deadlines and there was zero consequences or repercussions
Timezones: We had writers across the world so getting everyone together to talk felt out of the equation. That turned into weekly updates through Discord
What Went Right
The writers I worked with on this were great. They gave me exactly what I asked for and were open to critiques and changes as they came up.
Outside of that – I think this project was doomed from the start. An idea doesn’t make a game, the planning and executing do.
Lessons Learned
Preplanning / Planning – I tried to do all the writing up front then open up Unity…only the opening Unity thing never happened. Looking at a pile of stories is such a daunting task with nothing to back it up. I think it is better to have a prototype of ‘how’ you want the game to be before you cram the story into that framework.
Lack of vision/Lack of focus – this was the biggest lesson I acquired. As the leader of the project, I needed to present a clear vision and roadmap to my writers. I did not do that. I had an idea of what I wanted, I set that plan into motion. There was no formalized deadline, no strict schedule, no design documents – just every week I was requesting more story pieces with nothing behind it. Which led to the next bullet:
Expensive – I was self-funding this project. The more writers I hired and the longer the project went on, the more expensive this idea was becoming. I was bleeding quite a bit of money every week. I tried to mitigate it by limiting the number of hours the writers were working in a given week.
Scope – I bit off way more than I could chew on this project. I did not need to create a full schedule with 100+ hours of content similar to a Persona game. Especially in the Indie scene, a 3 hour game would gladly have sufficed.
Hiring / Managing / Funding – This was a much more impactful lesson than any class (this also cost close to the amount of a class), even without a released game. I learned how to manage people, manage schedules, how to provide feedback, how to hire, and how to fire – all with my own skin in the game without anything majorly tangible in return
Summary
Studio: Chaotic Play
Title: The Threshold
Staff: 5
Budget: $~750
Total Play Time: Unreleased
Development Time: 6 months of preplanning
Release Date: Unreleased
Platforms: Unreleased
Software Used: Unreleased
Game Link: Unreleased (all though some ideas went to Raven’s Training Ground)