Games publisher SPIL Games based in Holland commissioned Mono Ghose for 9 months as a narrative writer to write a 16 episode choice based story game.
The game was developed from an original royal fantasy-romance idea by Mono called ‘Queen of Hearts’ into a choose-your-adventure branching narrative mobile game where players can choose how their story develops. Mono said:
“I really enjoyed writing this game. I am a big gamer but this was my first experience on a mobile game. I enjoy narrative games and choice based features which is something I am seeing more in all games even in triple A titles. On this game, I worked with a brilliant senior narrative writer and a co-writer across 16 scripts for all of the episodes of this book. I also worked closely with the lead game designers and production to help develop the assets and create a strong visual tone.”
To choose or not to choose?
“One of the big themes that arose during production was how integral consequences were for the player characters after making their respective decisions. That is, should they affect the story in a big way or not. With this book we aimed to stand out from the crowd of established players like Choices or Episodes and create consequences that actually mattered, and could essentially change the player’s experience depending on their choices -thus raising the stakes and potential replayability. In retrospect we decided that this was a delicate balance and the jury is still out on what is the best option. Regardless, it was a lot of fun working on a branching story, and meant we had to create many separate storylines - which was naturally challenging and at times extremely complex, but I think in the end it was rewarding and a showed me a new and dynamic way to think about story.”
