The Below is a survival interactive fiction set in a world where murderers are being sent to a place called the ‘Below’ as a punishment for their crime. Players will play as a convicted person who is sent to the Below from the floating city of Sky Nakhorn.  Throughout the story, the player will encounter other convicts, and also try to survive the ‘Amanuch,’ a creature that lives in the Below and preys on humans. The game is intended to be mainly survival with a mix of horror, as well as being thought-provoking. Rather than the choices only affecting the actions in the game, I intended for the choices to shape the way the player will think about the situation in the game and consider their own stance on the moral issue that is present in the game.

Overall, I would say that I achieved my goal in making a complete project with a beginning, middle, and end. According to the story map that I have written before beginning to make the actual game, I have finished all possible endings as I have planned. With the introduction, I was successful in giving background information that would give the player a sense of who they are in the World. Although I also feel that the middle and the endings could’ve used more work in the writing, I think the middle part of the story leads smoothly into the endings, which are different enough between each other. In addition, I think that I have paced the story pretty consistently, so the player will be able to understand what is going on in the game.

In addition, I think that I was successful in making the important choices, especially moral ones, different enough from each other so that the player actually have a chance to think and choose. Although these moral choices didn’t affect much on the dire events that happened in the story, it would make the player think about the situation differently, which was one of my initial goals. I do have some choices that result in the death of the player character, but instead of being just dead ends, I think I made it fit the context of the story and added to the survival tone of the game. For example, in a dangerous situation, if the player chooses an action that is on the reckless side, there’s a higher chance that they will die.

Another aspect that was successful, and also was better than planned, was how I was able to create 2 different routes in the game which lead to two completely different situations. When I was making the project, I spent too much time on the first route that it felt like I didn’t have enough time to make the second one. The game would’ve been fine without the second route as well, but in the end, I decide to make the second route because I wanted to give the player more information about the world through encountering a different course of events. Although the second route ended up being shorter and a bit rushed towards the end, I felt more content having added that other route in, since the second route focused more on the Amanuch and betrayal, while the first route was focused on the survival and bribery.

Another comment I would like to say about the second route is that although I was able to finish it on time, I think that it is still less successful than the first route because the writing came off as rushed and less polished. While I did convey the message through the second route, I feel that I could’ve extended it more and make it feel as long as the first route. With the game right now, I feel like the first route seems like the main story, while the second one is a shorter, alternate version of the story instead of being two balanced routes as I intended to make initially.

My most reoccurring problem were the typos and grammatical mistakes that I’ve made throughout the story. I tried to check them as much as I could, and even copied the text into another program to check for the mistakes. Although the mistakes didn’t occur that much in the final build since I’ve been checking for them several times already, the typos have caused the playtests to be less focused on the game and more on the mistakes that I’ve made. The typos and grammatical mistakes made the beta version less smooth and enjoyable for the playtesters since they became distracted by the mistakes. This resulted in myself receiving less useful comments on the game because my jarring typos took the spotlight.

Furthermore, I have many big chunks of text in the game. Although I have tried to shorten many of them as possible, I realize that there are still many pages with only texts filled from top to bottom. I think the writing could’ve been so much better. Because many descriptions are important to the story, I couldn’t just omit them from the text; if I was able to integrate the description more smoothly, the chunks of text might decrease as well. There are also some texts that are redundant, being both in the choices and the description, which have made the story read awkwardly at some spots in the game.

Throughout the process of making The Below, I was able to learn a few things. The first and most obvious thing that I’ve learned is how to create an IF using INK. At first, it was quite confusing. After a while, though, I was able to create a fully working game with INK. I learned that INK can also do a lot more than just what I’ve done for my game, and that might be something that will come in handy in the future.

Another important thing that I’ve learned is worldbuilding. Although I’ve always been interested in worldbuilding, I’ve never actually thought about it as much as I had for this project. It was challenging, but also interesting. I learned the different aspects that one would’ve to consider while creating a cohesive world. Also, I learned how to use worldbuilding to create a world that is interactive. Instead of just writing a world for someone to read, I was writing and creating a world for someone else to play and explore.

For me, the biggest takeaway from this project is how a detailed planning and fleshed-out designs can really make the process of creating the game becomes very smooth. While I had a problem with the time constraint that resulted in having to shorten one of the routes, the mapping of the storyline that I’ve made along with the world bible that has all the information of the world written down have really made it easy for me to create the different scenes and choices for the game.

Moreover, there are various things that I would’ve done differently if I have more time, the first one being to extend the second route to be as long as the first one. I want to use better writing and divide the big chunks of text without disrupting the flow of the story. In addition, in the technical aspect, I would like to use INK more effectively next time since I realize that I still have some redundancy in the coding aspect of the game. Also, I would like to have added more stylistic effects to the game, like sounds and colors. I would like to make the button looks more different than the story text. Since I used a lot of ‘You can see…’ and ‘You can hear…’ in the texts, I think that having more visual and audio will make the story become more vibrant as well.