Industrial Accident (Twine game)

A lot of people I knew were doing NaNoWriMo, so I decided to do my own version where I developed, tested, and released a Twine game in a month. Here is the result:

johnayliff.com/games/industrial_accident/

About 10 minutes long, contains violence, has sound effects but you can turn them off.

This is pretty neat!

I’ve been thinking for a while about mechanics like this, where you click a hyperlink, and that click itself is what changes the text. So in the game’s grammar, to click always means “to do [action].” And this game is that concept carried out in an interesting way.

The assembly line at the start is also neat, and I like how there are a few light sequence puzzles later on (like with the servers and dagger).

I got a pop-up error message with the “thin guard” at the beginning, but the game continued anyway. Not a big deal. Just figured I should report it.

[spoiler]I also like that you can take a pacifist route through the game and avoid the slaughter, but it’s not the “right” way. There is no “right” way. Either the company survives and keeps selling arms, or it doesn’t survive and you have to commit mass murder.

I do wish the company were less one-dimensional in its evilness, however, since I think that tends to neutralize most discomfort players would have with gunning down the employees. It undercuts the game’s strength by giving you a very easy way to excuse your actions.[/spoiler]

I thought this was really effective. Loved the spare but effective use of color, and the occasional progress meters worked well as both a “reward” and also a brief pause to build tension. Worked really well on a phone—both technically but also in terms of story length.

Thanks for sharing it!

Thank you both for the comments. I wasn’t sure about this game so I’m very happy you liked it!

@CMG, I’ve updated the game to fix the bug with the thin security guard. Thanks for pointing it out.

The one-dimensional evil was a deliberate choice for the feel of game I was going for, but maybe I went too far in that direction. I will learn from that if I write anything similar in the future.

Very satisfying! Take everyone’s favorite scene from Robocop, make it interactive, and crank it up to 11. Formally reminiscent of Gun Mute. I had hoped to do a little more game playing tonight before bed, but instead I will be documenting this one on Mobygames.

I enjoyed the game. The color changes were effective. There was a lot of violence but you warned us in the original post. The violence made more sense when I reached the end of the story. It left an opening for sequels.

The game gave me a number of ideas that I hope to use in one of my projects as I learn more about writing this genre.

fos1