Create a narrative prototype of your game in Ink/Inky.
It has to be playable in its entirety: all the areas, characters, chapters, endings, have to be there.
(it must also function as an asset list)
It can and should contain placeholder content: you can have a passage that says: “poignant dialogue with the mother in which she reveals the protagonist is an alien” or “breath taking vista of Emerald City” or just quickly written stuff.
Avoid generic and heavy lifting placeholders like “clever puzzle” or “minigame” unless you already have a specific design for them.
Sketch it out on miro and/or google docs as a team before implementing it in Ink.
Some questions for the critique/playtest:
What was your experience like, emotionally and intellectually. Did you get a sense of the themes?
Where you stuck or confused at any point?
In the interest of limiting the scope as much as possible, are the parts that are not strictly necessary?
Are there parts that are definitely missing?
Where there moments in which you wish you had more agency or options?
Are there parts that could be communicated by “showing”, eg. through environmental storytelling?
Any other feedback? Beware of feature creep suggestions (“you could add this feature/location/mechanic”)
