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Hello and welcome to our fifth devlog!

Writing this blog is actually a kind of weird privilege for a games writer. So much of what we do sits hidden behind NDAs or strict marketing plans or fears that fans might go on wild rampages with the information that actually being able to pop my head up from behind a screen is both exciting and mildly nerve-wracking. Getting to do this isn't the only cool thing about working with Bippinbits. The team has a very agile (in both the product management sense and the normal sense of the word) approach to working together, meaning that things iterate fast and collaboration is close ideas bounce around the team till they feel right, and we don't have to invest months before discovering whether they actually work. At the same time, there's breathing space the time to be both thoughtful and playful, meaning that throwaway comments can be dug into for the meat of the idea, and interesting-if-unexpected ideas can be seriously considered.

It's really good fun, and has made me even more excited about what the game could be. (I saw the trailer video before I even knew they needed a writer-designer. I had the game wishlisted before I ever spoke to Ren!)

Storytelling and videogames and PVKK in particular

Writing for a videogame is like getting a bespoke suit fitted. You pick the cloth, and the colour checking the colour actually suits you. You discuss the style, what cuts are in fashion and what cuts would suit your body shape. Then you get initial measurements taken. After some time, you go back, and try on the suit. It's roughly stitched together, the sleeves aren't even attached to the rest of the jacket. There's no lining. But if you squint at it, and you know what a finished suit looks like, you can see that it's probably going to turn into something great.

More measurements are taken. You go away again, and perhaps this time you come back to a finished suit. Or maybe a few more small adjustments are needed.

I use this analogy because I think if I said 'I'm (still) working on building the worldbuilding and main storyline for the game', some people might worry that barely any progress has been made. But it's normal in games for the worldbuilding and storyline to be adjusted and tweaked continually throughout development pretty much all the way to the end just with each change getting smaller (and more granular) over time.

[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/45068202/736b2b3cff45a173e0de67c787af137735a43aa2.jpg"][/img]This is the 3rd version of the timeline since I've been on board, and it's one update out of date. Hence the post-it.

Story-wise, PVKK is well past the first fitting. But because we want the design and narrative to be bound tightly together, we have to make sure changes to one ripple all the way through the other. If we introduce a new attack ship, for example, we want to make certain that it makes sense within the narrative for this technology to have been developed, and that the timing of its arrival feels right.

I've done a 'worldbuilding pass' a few times now, each time addressing a logic hole, or pulling in ideas from design that have to spread across the whole timeline to make sense:

• Who does it make sense to have attacking us?

• Why aren't they (or us) suing for peace?

• If you're trusted with such an important role why are you locked in the bunker?

Sometimes it's more practical: working out what we can put in the first mission without risking overwhelming the player, and then finding the fictional justification for it. It's about answering questions like:

• If shooting the enemy is so important why are you (presumably) new to this in the first mission?

• Why wouldn't a clever enemy launch all its ships at you in the first mission while you are less good at working the cannon?

Each time we find a narrative answer and weave it into the main story, we get closer to the final version. Some things have to change. Others get pinned down as 'truths' and we gradually pin down other things around them.

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What is 'narrative' in a game like PVKK and how do we build it?

In general:

For me, the core appeal of PVKK is getting to use a really satisfying set of controls to shoot a big \[profanity] cannon. But there's already the bones of narrative there: the existence of a huge cannon, the attacks from space it already implies a story.

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A good narrative for PVKK grounds the gameplay in a world that feels real, provides explanations for changes across the missions and for things just getting harder as the game goes along. It shows that the work the player does has an impact there is a reason for them to be shooting that cannon beyond saving their own skin. Building up a world that supports all this also creates mysteries for players to dig into, and offers us (as designers) inspiration for other aspects of gameplay. It provokes questions that we may or may not answer in game, but will have answers. And if we're going to create 'escape room' elements for the bunker, we can only create ones that feel right for the game world if we understand what that world is.

(I am always disappointed when a piece of media establishes fictional rules for their world, and then later breaks these because it wants to tell a story that wouldn't work without them \[Yeah, I'm looking at you, Venom 3.]. I think it ruins immersion, and it can speak to a lack of planning. By getting the details down now, we can avoid this.)

In specific:

Nearly every part of PVKK is part of the narrative 'even' the sound design tells you something about the world. Every person who works on this game is a storyteller in their own field(s). Part of my job when I came on board was looking at everything that had been done already and working out the narrative implications of what was there whether that be the weapons the player has access to, the aesthetic design of the bunker, the landscape surrounding the bunker, or the perfectly ordinary cup of tea.

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From there, I started testing the foundations was there one coherent story that made sense of everything already in the game? Could we extend that story in a way that matched the gameplay arc and came to a satisfying conclusion? Was it interesting enough to us? Did it feel real? Things don't have to make perfect logical sense, so long as they make real-feeling sense. People are imperfect actors, governments are inefficient. Mistakes are made. But there is a difference between that and introducing something illogical just for the sake of plot I think that's just bad writing, and knocks people out of believing in the story. And you avoid it by asking questions like a bored toddler of every aspect of the design and story, early on. Why? But why? How? Why!?!

For basic worldbuilding, this means I asked:

Is this on Earth? (No. There are two sibling planets.) What are the planets like? Why are they fighting? What was the trigger for this war? Why hasn't one side already won? What would it take for one side (or the other) to win? Would this victory be long lasting? Would it be a pyrrhic victory? Would, eventually, both planets be happy with the outcome?

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Developing characters and mapping out their relationships is important (and fun). We need to work out who serves the story and who serves the gameplay, and bring those things as close together as possible. I pull on concept art how could I resist this guy being a person of importance?

[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/45068202/fe6a317cd93bab3689bd05211ae682b6e1efa666.png"][/img](Art that elicits an immediate emotional reaction is exceedingly useful to me)

The process repeats, responding to other people's work. It'll be a continual adjustment till we have something the whole team is certain we can pull off in a satisfying way.

It can sometimes feel like you have to make the whole game to be able to make the whole game. Pulling together the narrative can feel a bit like this:

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Have a look at this: Is there really much difference?

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Then, there's the Final Difficulty: Choosing how to convey the world to the player

We (the devs) have to have a full understanding of the world and the forces and culture in it to stay consistent in every aspect of our work. But the player only gets to see a fraction of the work we do.

We need to make sure the player understands enough about the world for it to make sense, for them to follow what is going on in the game, for them to believe in the set up and characters enough to care about what they do. But we can't just give them a lore dump of what they would already know if they actually existed in the world that breaks the immersion of actually being the character.

Trying to give them a catch up exposition dump rarely works it never feels natural, and speaking straight to the camera only works in 4th wall breaking farces (which PVKK isn't).

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A Touch of Cloth: Charlie Brooker's best work and I will die on this hill.

For the sake of immersion, what we directly reveal in the game will be that which the character in the game would see and experience over the course of the events of the game. If you choose to explore, to dig into what's going on, your character will learn more. But we need to make sure that if you're being a good soldier and asking no questions you still have a clue what's going on. That's a hard balance to strike but I'm confident, with this team, we'll hit it.

Thank you for reading all this!

-Olivia