Six Gray Rats Crawl Up The Pillow: Postmortem

Hello–I wrote Six Gray Rats Crawl Up The Pillow.

My entry had a pretty haphazard origin. The original idea was a sprawling Gothic about a stodgy skeptic exploring an apparently haunted abandoned village and castle. It was mostly about the setting–there was a complex, knotty map, and puzzles that involved candles and raising gates in towers and unlocking crypts, and the end of the game was the skeptic falling asleep in the bedchamber of the castle and then waking up at sunrise having survived through the night, stepping out onto the balcony, and finding that the monster which had caused the people to abandon the place was some kind of glowing, daylight horror flying down out of the sky. I coded a skeletal version, but at a certain point I realized that the game was going to demand more time than I had to offer, so I switched to a different idea entirely which pillaged some of the code, but which I subsequently also abandoned because I decided it would be a better short story. For a time I thought I wouldn’t enter anything and wrote that short story instead.

Eventually the idea arrived of a new game, three connected vignettes about the ineffectual Gothic “hero” Rinaldo. I think this was inspired by the rule which said three games could be entered. A few people have mentioned Varicella, which is definitely the biggest inspiration for Six Gray Rats–it doesn’t exactly take place in Varicella’s universe, since it has some Gothic novel / Jacobean revenge play DNA too, but it is a deliberate homage. (If everyone is very lucky, I won’t ever share with the world the appalling novella I wrote, which shares a setting with Six Gray Rats, and is about the briefly-mentioned Doctor Giallo.) Anyway, the three vignettes had a frame story in which the PC was Rinaldo’s “friend” Lorenzo, who had escaped the plague by running to the countryside with Camilla and Viviana, having apparently left Rinaldo behind, dead. The PC had three manuscripts to read, written by Viviana, each one prompting a different dream in which he imagined he was Rinaldo. One was about Rinaldo sleeping in the haunted house on a bet, one was about Rinaldo daydreaming while he was meant to be guarding a watchtower, and one was Rinaldo working in a plague hospital. (The daydreaming one was pretty cool–Lorenzo, as Rinaldo, daydreams he is an English spy, who then dreams of his own childhood–very nesting doll.) They could be played in any order, and at the end the player could piece together the idea that Rinaldo hadn’t died of the plague and was going to get his revenge on Lorenzo. But I ran out of time to get this done properly, too. I decided to just split off the most complete “memory,” Rinaldo in the haunted house (which was the only one to contain any type of sunrise) and make it the whole game.

I wanted to make a comedy, but not a super-obvious one, so I decided to let the parser do most of the work. The attempted goal was a sort of intentional unintentional comedy, with the parser not really understanding that things like “a dusty, desiccated corpse” or random body parts are particularly noteworthy. I like persnickety parsers more than some people, I think. For example:

Check sleeping: if the player is in the courtyard, say "To get Lorenzo's money you have to sleep inside the house of Count Ruggino tonight, not simply... near... it." instead; if the location of the player is not the bedchamber, say "It won't do to just curl up on the floor: you plan to do this properly and find a bedchamber to sleep in." instead; if the player is not on the four poster bed, say "But you're not even in bed yet." instead; if the number of things worn by the player is greater than 0, say "But you're still wearing your [random thing worn by the player]!" instead; if the player is not satiated, say "You're a little hungry. You'll need a snack before you can fall asleep." instead; if the player is not sleepy, say "You're not quite sleepy yet. You always read before going to sleep." instead; if the number of not dreamy things carried by the player is greater than 0, say "You'll never be able to fall asleep while holding that [random thing which is not dreamy carried by the player]." instead; if the travel pillow is on the four poster bed and the player is not drugged, say "The travel pillow smells terrible--you're not nearly tired enough to sleep with such an odor in your face." instead; if travel pillow is on the four poster bed and the player is drugged and the number of things on the four poster bed is greater than 2, say "Your eyes close. Your breathing slows. You start to drift off. Then you roll over onto the [random thing which is not sleepable on the four poster bed], which for some reason is in the bed with you, and you come fully awake again." instead; if travel pillow is not on the four poster bed and the player is not drugged and the number of things on the four poster bed is greater than 1, say "Your eyes close. Your breathing slows. You start to drift off. Then you roll over onto the [random thing which is not sleepable on the four poster bed], which for some reason is in the bed with you, and you come fully awake again." instead; if the number of visible dreamy things is greater than 0, say "Your eyes close, but your mind is still racing: you're going to have to stop worrying over that [random visible dreamy thing] before you can possibly fall asleep. Your kingdom for a sleeping pill..." instead; if the portrait is on the upper hook, say "A horripilation comes over you, and you feel you are being watched... After a moment you realize it's that alarming portrait, which seems to stare at you from the darkness with its empty eyes. It's creepy. You'll never be able to fall asleep with it hanging there on the wall next to the bed." instead; if the raincoat is on the upper hook, say "A horripilation comes over you, and you feel that someone is standing beside the bed... After a moment you realize it's just your raincoat, which looks like a person standing there in the shadows. It's spooky. You'll never be able to fall asleep with it hanging there on the wall next to the bed." instead; if the shirt is on the upper hook, say "A horripilation comes over you, and you feel that an indistinct form is materializing beside the bed... After a moment you realize it's just your shirt, which looks like a shadowy shape emerging from the wall. It's eerie. You'll never be able to fall asleep with it hanging there on the wall next to the bed." instead; if the slacks is on the upper hook, say "A horripilation comes over you, and you feel a presence beside the bed... After a moment you realize it's just your slacks, which look like a pair of dangling legs nailed to the wall. It's offputting. You'll never be able to fall asleep with those slacks hanging there on the wall next to the bed." instead; if the satanic stain is in the bedchamber, say "A horripiliation comes over you, and you feel that you are being prickled with the tines of Hell... Your eyes flick open and after a moment you realize that you are staring directly at that horrible satan-shaped stain. Perhaps it's ridiculous, but the stain makes you uncomfortable. You'll never be able to fall asleep with it visible there on the wall next to the bed." instead; if the corpse is on the armchair, say "A horripiliation comes over you... You're no thanatophobe, but you'll never be able to fall asleep with that horrible dusty corpse sitting there in the armchair." instead; if the number of visible relic is greater than 0, say "A horripiliation comes over you... You're no thanatophobe, but you'll never be able to fall asleep while that horrible withered [random visible relic] is sitting there in plain sight." instead; if the number of relics under the bed is greater than 0, say "A horripilation comes over you... You'll never be able to fall asleep while that horrible withered [random relic under the bed] is under the bed." instead.

In the first draft, there were more limbs on the corpse (yes, all the limbs, which made it much more laborious to extract from the room, oh yeah, and you couldn’t leave the bedroom without wearing pants, which was maybe slightly funny, but not enough to offset being very annoying) and things couldn’t go under the bed. That was a beta-tester’s idea. There were no memories, and the game ended with Rinaldo apparently catching the plague from a plague angel. (*** You have caught the Pestilence ***.) In the original triptych of vignettes I think this would have been okay, because the player could figure out that Rinaldo hadn’t died after all, but it didn’t work here. So I added the epilogue explaining how it was all a prank, which in retrospect works better for a comedy anyway. But there still wasn’t any backstory, and without it, the experience felt really empty. I added the memories and the sleeping pill at the end–what I wanted was the sense of an unstoppable stream of memories, enough to keep Rinaldo awake unless he takes the pill–but I went overboard with huge strings of memories at the very beginning. The other thing I added at the very end was the dream about Ruggino, which was inspired by another beta-tester who wanted to see some rats. Even with the memories, it felt so short that I subtitled it a “vignette” to curb anyone’s disappointment over its brevity.

If I do a further revision I’ll be spreading the memories out over the course of the game. Though I liked, and still like, the content, the presentation of the memories is a pretty big flaw. Testers tried to help think of different ways I could present them, but I didn’t have enough time to make any major revisions. I also wish I had added another downstairs room or two to Ruggino’s house, which feels, ah, rather small for a huge Gothic mansion!

Thanks for reading, and, for everyone who voted on these and wrote reviews, for your feedback.

Nice postmortem! It’s helpful to see how the design process proceeded for these games; gives some perspective for those of us considering putting our own hands to the tiller. I really liked your story, just wished I could see more of the world you’re describing; it’s clear you’d put a lot of thought into it. Your idea regarding the 3 vignettes was a really nice one; I hope that isn’t a lost cause (though I can sympathize if pursuing it feels like too much work).

I felt like the structure of this competition lent itself to enabling significant post-comp work, which I believe is a newer idea for IF competitions. (That constructive feedback is almost more important to the competition than providing a score or determining a winner.) Thanks again for your story!

Huh, for some reason I had this game pegged as Ryan Veeder. I think its style reminded me of Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder in a few ways. Someday I need to play Varicella…

I pegged it as Caleb – the stylistic similarities to Lime Ergot (brooding atmosphere, decadence and decay, reliance on repeated actions to do the heavy lifting of exposition) really stood out, for me.

Ah, I haven’t played Lime Ergot, but I now I will plan to… Interestingly, Caleb’s HOLY ROBOT EMPIRE had me thinking it was done by The Custodian, because it reminded me of Valley of Steel (oppressive dystopia, secret resistance movements, electronic gadgetry puzzles). Which tells me that Caleb is a versatile author, and also that I have terrible pseudonymdar!

What I’m trying to work on is intentionality in my game design–I can sometimes come up with really neat things under pressure and by accident, but when I have months and months, I never can marshal the thoughts into order. It doesn’t help that sometimes I’ll have an idea for a game and then realize it would make a viable short story, and then I find it very hard not to want to just write it that way and try to publish it–so, the game has to work only as a game. With Lime Ergot I needed to come up with something short, simple, and easy to plug a bunch of content into quickly to make the three hour Ectocomp deadline, and I somehow hit upon an idea that worked pretty well thematically, too. What I want is for that not to happen by accident!