To build a story that makes sense for my game, I need to make sure that it touches upon certain themes – essential to the postapocaliptic setting, as well as intertwines the narrative around the characters that I introduce in it – the Perrwinkle family.
Themes
The first and foremost theme that I want the story to take on is the theme of surviving in a foreign landscape. What it takes to survive and how do we do it? Do we lose our identity and transform or transform the world around us?
Another theme would be standing up for others in a “dog eats dog” world. Do we stand up for other if that welcomes danger into our midst? Once society collapses, do we loose our morals?
The last theme would be How does our relationships influence our choices. Will we not persue some options only because people we dislike advocate for them?
Perrwinkle family
Every member of the family will have their own storyline with choices and consequences. You can lose them by the end by not responding ot their ideals, needs and ideas. The driving force behind, is that you need their profesional or personal opinion on actions that you will be taking in the main storyline. They are also your resources – you can use them (just as any human that becomes a member of the survivor camp) to fulfil tasks or do some maintnance job.
Uncle: the side events concerning the character of the Uncle will have to do with increasing or decreasing the militaristic side of the camp. The decision will surroud actions such as establishing a citizen watch, gathering armor and guns to arm the civilians, teaching people how to shoot and defend themselves and keeping the camp in a rigid discipline.
Grandma: the side events concerning the Grandma character will surround maintaining the greenhouses, acquiring news seeds and giving resources to research further the new flora, trying to tame the landscape to your needs
Aunt: the side events concerning the Aunt charcter would circle around the technologies that people can access, the technological advancement of the camp itself, the upgrading living coditions and persuing the way of escaping the planet just like the rich people did
Child: those events should consist of deciding wheter your child is permitted to go wander around, occasional clashes of characters and the talks about who the child wishes to become and how they can achieve it – the most personal set of choices and stories
The main storyline
It will follow a very straightforward path of main events that can be dettered by the side events or storylines. The main storyline will be external of the family storylines but thye can share similar themes and dilemmas.
- The begining of the camp – what will our base look like, deciding the focuses of the first week.
- What to do – what is our main goal here, how can we survive, how everyone will contribute
- First problem – the declining state of the abandoned launchpad is making us decide if we should stay or move
- Newcomers – we encounter first people who want to participate in our camp, survive together, will we be open for such people in the future?
- Reduce/Enlarge – should we focus on making our camp small and highly useful or should we expand and make room even for the ill and old
- Sustain – how can we sustain our decision (throw away people we do not need/find food sources and divide work for everyone)
- The goal – what is our ultimate goal, should we build a rocket of our own, should we try to make technology and science revitilise our surrounding or should we find a biological balance in the world and ourselves
- Adversaries – our growth and success attracts bandits and people willing to just take someone else’s hard work
- The defectors – our goal are not fit for everyone, some of the poeple abandon the camp threatning the balance of our work
- The last stretch- converging dilemmas and problems grow more and more dire as we need to focus on achieving our goal
- Finale – we have achieved our goal but was it worth it, was it what we expected it to be?
The storyline should make the player think about the choices they have made and if they made the right ones. It should connect backwards to previous events to showcase the growth of the characters and reminisce about the early days. The choices are final and will shape the future of the camp, whenever it leads. The is no “correct” ending.