Welcome to the Invisible Court!
Hello, come in, please. I go by Kade and this is my site. It's a bit of a work in progress, but I aspire to it bringing value in the future.
What do you need to know about me? Well, I'm a developer by profession, but a writer by passion. I live in the Netherlands and am 40-something years old. At least 30 of those have been spent as a gamer.
My game
My main vices in that hobby have always been computerized adventure and role-playing games. Currently, I'm turning that appreciation into a game of my own. Or rather, I envision it as a series of interactive fiction in the spirit of the works of Obsidian Entertainment, Black Isle Studios and BioWare.
Big names to live up to, no doubt, but they obviously did/do not make interactive fiction. So am I just going to make another stats-heavy, CYOA book? No, that's not the goal.
One thing I dislike about a lot of current interactive fiction, is that it often relies heavily on stats screens. You make decisions based on your biggest numbers, you pick choices that will make your number with certain NPCs go up, etc. To be fair, this is something that we also see in CRPGs, but in IF it's more pronounced, because there are no graphics to distract you.
What I'm trying to build is something where you're encouraged to make your choices organically and in line with the character's personality, instead of with the player's OC goals in mind. How I plan to do that (and what mistakes I make along the way), will be documented here.
My engine
I am also developing a choice-based IF engine called Protagonist. The original plan was to build my game in ChoiceScript, but as an intellectual exercise I ended up developing my own authoring system. I find that, if nothing else, understanding how technology works helps me use it better. Now I have this thing lying around though, so I should probably do something with it, right?
If any or all of the above sounds interesting to you, I invite you to check back and follow me on Bluesky. I am going to try commit to a weekly schedule, with a new post every Monday, although there may be more (or, unfortunately, less) as life continues forward.
Hope to see you next week!