Story adaption

We have previously talked about how in games like visual novel, interactive fiction, and narrative games, the story plays a crucial role.

Whether it is an original story or an adaptation from another medium, the narrative of a video game is very important, and it is a process that should be taken care of as much or more than other aspects of the game. A game can have amazing graphics, spectacular sound, and yet, by having a poor or incoherent story, it can automatically become a mediocre game.

In the case of Choose Cthulhu Files, our game will be based on the stories from the gamebooks of Choose Cthulhu, so most of the work we have to do is adapting these gamebooks to the medium of video games.

Inventories

We have initially created an inventory of both the scenes present in the story and the characters that appear in them.

These inventories include descriptive information of each of the elements. That is, each of the scenarios and characters have associated the description given to them in the story to have all possible data at hand when interpreting them. We also delve into the original works of H.P. Lovecraft to gather more data that can help us.

In all cases, we link each element to the pages of the texts we are working with to easily access them in the future.

Audiovisual Interpretation

The characters and scenes are described in the books with text. At most, there may be an image of a specific character or one related to an object or situation, so we have to imagine how we want these elements to be displayed on the screen.

This adds an extra complexity to the adaptation of the story, as the player will have to see with their eyes and hear with their ears things that in the original medium (the books) they had to imagine.

This also means that in some moments we will have to make use of some "creative licenses", since the story will need a bit more substance for the player's experience to be satisfactory.

New Material

In the case of the Choose Cthulhu books, the gamebooks have a "Choose Your Own Adventure" format. By definition, these types of books were limited to about 100 pages that the story was divided into. This means that the story branches are generally quite short. Considering this, and that in the adaptation the texts describing the places and characters will no longer be present, each game would last only a few minutes.

Because of this, we have to add new material, extending the original work and adding dialogues and mechanics that allow the player to enjoy a game with more content and playable mechanics.

We are working to extend the stories in a way that adds more details, information, clues, references, and many other things that we will reveal as we advance in development.

Fidelity

From the beginning, our goal in making these adaptations is to remain faithful to the story we are adapting. In no case do we want to ruin the story. Instead, we aim to provide more options for the player and add new playable branches that lead to new endings so that the player can enjoy an extended experience while remaining faithful to the original work.

Conclusion

Adapting a work always presents challenges, but we are working hard to create an experience as faithful as possible to the originals, providing it with greater context and content so that players can enjoy it to the fullest.

* Photo by Suzy Hazelwood: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-red-typewriter-1995842/