Superhero Twine Story

The premise for my Twine story is based on the old dilemma between a hero divided by his wants and needs. Our hero is struggling to find the balance between family life and trying to solve a case concerning one of his old nemesis. As the player progresses through the story, they’ll piece together clues to solve the case. The player’s decision has weight, however, as each ending is influenced by a decision you did or did not take. This was the initial intention, but the final product may reflect a slight variation in my concept. Referring to needs and wants, I wanted the player to decide what the hero should do. Should the hero sacrifice his needs, or should the hero sacrifice his wants? I wanted the player to feel the weight of juggling the two while trying to solve a case. The decisions in my story aim to make the player choose between being a family hero to the city or a superhero.

Since this Twine isn’t written in a first-person perspective, it might be challenging to fully explain the character’s wants and needs. However, with the way the store is written, I believe it allows for players to self-insert or uses the character as an extension of their identity. You can be a hero for a day and learn the character’s personal motivations throughout the day. For example, some story beats will have you choose between saving a civilian or following the case. While saving a civilian doesn’t relate to an immediate family, the hero in the town views the town as an extension of his family almost becoming a father figure for the city.

Based on your decision, some parts of the story will be cut off and you’ll follow through with a designated ending. To achieve all three endings, you’ll need to make different decisions and fully explore the case to get other endings. The Twine can be completed relatively quickly, so I suspect achieving the other endings won’t be impossible for players. For the players, I wanted them to feel like the superhero and solve the case. Much of the first part is exploring the city, with little mention of the hero’s family. Part of this reasoning was to imitate the feeling of the hero forgetting his original goals. I needed to build a connection with the reader so that the character’s motivations are clear to the player. By imitating this feeling, I feel like the player will have a better understanding of the character’s motivations.

It was difficult for me to strike the balance between ambition and practicality. I wanted to explore the story more but transitioning my idea to Twine was far more work than expected. Implementing Twine features wasn’t a challenge but learning how to structure the story took more time than I imagined. I learned a lot more about story development in relation to video games and I believe this was a valuable learning experience. Overall, I’m excited to say I’ve made my first video game and I look forward to working on future projects.

Best,

Michael Ortiz