A lot of my time over the past year has been spent writing Veiled Age’s second episode, Dwellers of Bodenforst. Here I just want to give you an idea of what it looks like without spoiling the plot.
First, it’s inspired by Grimm’s Fairy tales. The Grimm brothers, by the way, were collectors and editors of the tales. Many of their stories were folk tales gathered from German peasants, who were inspired by Germany’s Black Forest.
One of these stories is Little Red Riding Hood, sometimes called Little Red, or Little Red Cap. As is often the case with folk tales, it’s unknown who first came up with the general story, but the first published and widely distributed version was written in 1697 by Charles Perrault.
Since then, the image of a girl with a red cloak in a dark forest has become almost a symbol of fairy tales in general. It catches the imagination, as does the story’s supporting cast of a predatory talking wolf and a lone hunter. There are probably hundreds of works that adapt or reference the story in some way. You could say Dwellers of Bodenforst is my own tribute to it.
One thing I want to explore is that feeling of not just exploring a fantasy forest, but being lost there. This is a beloved trope in fiction, but interactive mediums are uniquely equipped to explore it. The Lost Woods in Zelda games comes to mind, where the map loops and connects in a nonsensical way. But I had an alternate idea. Just make the forest big enough to actually get lost in. If you’ve ever hiked through a real forest with winding paths, you know how easy it is to forget whether you’ve turned right or left at a particular fork. Not only that, but you must remember to reverse your rights and lefts on the way back. Well, our forest is like that. Here is a map of it, with the labels removed.
Each of these nodes has a text description and things you can do, kind of like Zork. There are many illustrations, too. So, while you’ve come to the forest for one main purpose, there are hidden objectives, hidden characters and secrets here.
This is an expression of my “less is more” philosophy when it comes to game mechanics. I wonder if all it takes to reclaim the magic of a dark forest is to NOT give the player a minimap with arrows and icons, as if your medieval hero is walking around with a GPS-enabled smartphone.
Besides the winding paths of the forest itself, there are multiple paths through the plot, leading to 5 endings. I don’t expect you to understand this unlabelled diagram as that would spoil it, but here’s what it looks like:
Secret of Gloam Lake also had multiple endings, but only one was a proper canon ending, while the rest were various forms of Game Over. Dwellers of Bodenforst is different. There are 5 endings which actually complete the story and accomplish the main objective. But if I’ve done my job right, you’ll have mixed feelings about many of them. I also don’t think any of the endings are lame, totally unpredictable twists. But as you might expect, the best ending is the hardest to find.
I wish you luck, and please remember not to eat unidentified mushrooms.