Creating and writing a game isn’t something you do in a couple of weeks. Especially if it’s your first time doing it. Creativity and enthusiasm are well needed in the process of doing so, but that won’t shield you from the struggles of stepping into a world of which you barely know its ins and outs of. And if you also have an idea that is pretty unique in the way the game is set up, you’re in for a challenge. This is what the wonderful, terrifying, and creative challenge of making and launching my first game ‘Double Dutch’ was like.

It all started on a schnitzel packaging sleeve
My friend and I had just laughed about some silly, useless sentences Duolingo had shown us. I was in her garden, sulking up some sunlight and thinking about silly things in language. Like when you’d ask an English person their name in Dutch: “Hoe heet je?” and that sounding to them as if you ask: “Who hates you?” It was like a switch flipped from ‘creativity level 0’ to ‘creativity level 100’ instantly. I quickly got inside and asked my friend for a blank sheet of paper to jolt down my sudden stream of thoughts on.

My first steps as a narrative designer were taken at the back of the cardboard packaging sleeve of a vegetarian schnitzel my friend would make for dinner that night. It was the closest thing to a blank sheet of paper she could find.

I'll never throw away that old schnitzel packaging sleeve. Who'd have thought I'd ever get emotionally attached to a piece of food packaging?

Speaking of a game: did I have one?
There I was, with an idea for a game that was about nothing more than having fun with linguistic confusion. The gamer would listen to a character speak an unknown language and guess what they were saying, trying to find the proper outcome. Nothing more, just a simple cross-linguistic point and click dialogue. Easy enough for me to envision and to see it work as ‘just a fun game’. Where would that get me?

About a year before, I’d started to read books and watching how-to video’s about narrative design. As a professional writer of five years, I wanted to explore the richness of writing that only videogames can offer. Player’s choice, dialogue branching and many other new terms felt like a new creative candyland. I also already had a first gamejam under my belt, but I had no idea of how to continue in my pursuit of becoming a narrative designer. Heck, I wasn’t your typical gamer and just looking at coding formulas made my head spin. I decided: first things first: can I actually find enough examples in which Dutch and English sound similar enough to keep an entire dialogue going?

My writing, but the player’s choice
Sure enough, my cardboard schnitzel sleeve was soon filled with all kinds of linguistic tricks that could make a short dialogue. And what the dialogue would say, would be entirely up to… The gamer eventually. I could write the options for the dialogue, but the outcome wasn’t mine to tell. Of course that was what drew me into narrative design in the first place. But until the moment I actually started to write the dialogues down in the typical branching style, I had no clue how much work it actually was to keep the narrative interesting for the gamer. My creativity didn’t fail me: among other things, I’d already thought of a scenario in which a cat needed a catsitter. That could end up either well, with a cat on a sickening cookie diet given by grandma or an uncle in scratches for upsetting that ‘dear, sweet kitty’. But what if the gamer sent Kitty to uncle, leaving him wounded. How do you make sure the gamer gets warned effectively in such a way that fits the game? I couldn’t put an English warning sign in there all of a sudden… And by the way, isn’t it called players choice for a reason? If the gamer wants to get the eeriest, silliest or dumbest result, should you even want to hint them? Those things kept me in doubt for the longest time.

The impossible testrun
I prepared to do what everyone and everything advices you to do when you’re doubting whether or not your game is actually fun to play. Behold the challenge that no narrative design blogger could have warned me about: in my creative thinking, I somehow managed to design a game that was impossible to do a proper testrun on.

“Hi, English speaking gamer. Since you’re my target audience, I’d like you to run through this spoken Dutch dialogue with me. I want to know if the story, its choices and its gameplay remain compelling. And if you’re warned in time when something goes wrong. But I can’t tell you what either of those things actually are or when they happen. You see, the game is all about guessing what’s being said in Dutch…”

Double Dutch was getting risky: I’d only find out the game was compelling once I’d finished it. But being so far in already, I decided to take that risk and just to trust my gut that at the very least, I had a fun dialogue-based game. Superficial and goofy maybe, but fun and nice to play, with a good balance of easy and hard to guess spoken Dutch.

Not just a ‘bit’ more work
Having written down all my dialogue in narrative designing software and already done the voice acting myself – I’m a former speech therapist and I took a voice acting course fifteen year ago, I can do this!- I was ready for the real, next step. Turning what was basically just text into a playable game. I approached a programmer and an visual artist and asked what they felt like needed to be done to make the game I had in mind. Nice backgrounds, sound effects and a separate image to match the outcome of each scenario. Expected total costs? I thought I had saved quite a bit of money and exactly that bit of money I had. I’d need to save for a few more years, only to launch a game I intended to ‘just’ become a humble first portfolio piece in my brand new narrative designer resumé. I felt ashamed. Not for not having enough money saved, but for having underestimated the work of the people I asked for help.

What even makes a game?
Yet, I had a game right in front of me if I looked at my computer screen. If the gamer could click to play a piece of spoke dialogue and confirm the chosen option, that was in essence the entire game after all. But just listening and clicking doesn’t make for an appealing game. So when can you call game a game? When it’s functioning? When it has at least some level of pleasing aesthetics? It might very well be once it’s fun, regardless on what it looks like and what functions and extra’s it might or might not have. That led to a mental tug-of-war: I wanted to show my game to the world, but I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by launching a game that others might feel is not finished. Or even worse: give the impression that I wasn’t taking this project seriously. Even some people I knew who worked within the gaming industry couldn’t give me advise in this matter. Well, they did. But I was just too scared to go with what could be the ‘wrong’ path, leaving me indecisive for quite some time. Double Dutch was in danger of disappearing on the proverbial shelf, never to be taken of off it again.

On to the final menu
Eventually, I decided to try to launch Double Dutch with basic aesthetics, if possible. I didn’t put so many hours in my first game just to end up being too scared to show it. I found a friend who wanted to help me programming, so all I had to do was hand him over all my work. We had a few meetings about implying free to use art in the game. Eventually after some final fun and moments of sincere doubts on my end – what do I think I’m doing!-  Double Dutch was launched.

I got some feedback from first players about the user interface, and asked my friend to make adjustments in the programming. “Well I can, but  the new menu will look crowded on screen. You might want to reconsider the specific text on the menu.” Writing menu texts and flavor texts are also tasks of a narrative designer. Just when you thought you were finished… But after that Double Dutch truly was done. Now that my game is out for the world to see, I’m very excited to see how the world will see mee as a narrative designer in the months and years to come!