The Haunted Night
Writing The Story
Writing The Story:
A ghost haunting a girl isn't really that much of an original concept. It has been the subject of numerous movies from the Ringu series (The Ring), Ju-On (The Grudge), and others. In order to give the story its own life, I had to think of a way that would at least make it a little different.
The title "The Haunted Night" was the first thing that came to mind when I was conceptualizing the story for this game. The game is about a girl coming home from a school field trip. From the moment she steps off the bus, she immediately notices a strange thing from the corner of her eye but dismisses it. As she makes her way home and as the night gets deeper, she feels more threatened. She finally figures that she's being haunted by something and she needs to find the protective charm that her grandmother gave her to ward off the spirit. Why she is being haunted is something that the story will answer near the end.
That's just the general idea for the story, and as with any form of entertainment that heavily depends upon the narrative, some changes were made throughout the development process to enhance the atmosphere.
I also wrote the story flow in form of "Levels" or in this case, screens. Usually, when you plan the levels of games, you wouldn't just be writing it in Notepad. In this case since I'm just working on a text adventure game, the Notepad's capable enough of letting me write what I imagine each screen in the game would be like. I didn't have to flesh out the text too much because all that's needed is to describe the area as well as list the choices that the player can make for that part of the game. It's just a loose guide to use for when I'm ready to write the actual improved narrative into the game.
