Virtual Reality With Friends

I am experimenting around with Twine to see what kind of complexity the engine can generate. The second game that leapt to mind was a visit to a virtual reality salon with a companion of your choice. It’s not a complicated idea, but it might push Twine to do things it was not intended to do, so I’m curious to see how far I can get this project to go.

Starting Your Character
At the beginning, you choose your starting sex. Your choices are Only Male, Only Female, Start Male and Start Female. If you choose Only you are signaling that your character will always play roles in games that are compatible with that sex. If you choose Start, you are saying your character might play  a role of the opposite sex during a game.

You then choose orientation. This is straightforward.

Last, and only if you choose Start, you decide what orientation you will be if you play the opposite sex.

Choosing A Companion
There are five lobbies to choose from, around which are scattered various NPCs. They have their own likes and dislikes, and they too know what roles in games they are willing to play (although they won’t always admit openly which roles those are). You can check out several companions and see what they’re like, then choose one.

Choosing A Game
At the moment there are two sample game worlds:

• Land of the Five Red Kings, a Barbarian sword and sandal game
• Pirates of Solace Bay, a world of 17th-century pirates.

When you have chosen a world you can see a number of titles. These are games you can play within that world. Each title has two roles, Player 1 and Player 2, which are predefined. For instance, Player 1 might say “Crelborn the Barbarian, straight male” and Player 2 says “Princess Isayra, straight female.”

It also gives you plot details, particularly if something happens to one of those two characters (for instance, if Crelborn and Princess Isayra switch bodies).

Telling Your Companion About The Game
The last thing before leaping into the game world is telling your companion about the title you chose. You can tell the truth and admit the whole plot, or you can just tell your companion what the starting characters are. In the example above, you’d tell your friend he can play Crelborn the Barbarian... but you’d withhold the crucial detail that Crelborn doesn’t stay male for long. Depending on your companion’s likes and dislikes, you might be able to get him into a game, playing a role that he didn’t quite expect...

Enter The Game World
I haven’t got to this point yet, the part where the content is, but you’ll be able to play various titles with a number of different NPCs and see their varied reaction to the same game.

Proof of Concept Version
I started by building the skeleton to the game to see if Twine could handle the variables I needed. It is to be found here: Virtual Reality With Friends (POC).