Bogwaters Demo
A hand to hold until the end. A hand to hold because we're friends.
June 2021. The experimental Minecraft series Triple Life SMP has just aired its finale and you're obsessed with the dynamic between the Minecraft YouTubers Benbog and Mars OfTheBigWaters.
Problem? The fandom still hates shipping. Solution? Start an underground Discord server to quarantine your shipping activities. To avoid being cancelled, you'd have to scour your social media to find potential members who are secretly open to shipping.
ABOUT
Bogwaters is a free, text-based, interactive fiction browser game. The game is a parody of the Third Life SMP fandom in mid 2021 that is focused on Treebark (the romantic ship between Rendog/Martyn InTheLittleWood) and its fandom relevance.
This is a demo version (prototype) meant to test the limits and feasibility of this game.
You play as the owner of a Discord server named Bogwaters. Your goal is to invite 4 people within 7 days, from June 1 to June 7.
Full "how to play" guide can be found within the game.
This is the author's first interactive fiction game so it may be wonky. Constructive feedback is appreciated!
Word count: ~10k
Estimated play time: 30 to 45 minutes
FEATURES
- 3 endings
- 7 NPCs you can attempt to invite
- Friendship levels for NPCs
- Fandom enjoyment meter that can increase or decrease based on your actions
- Randomised daily enjoyment decrease
- Random chances for increase in post and reblog quota
- New Tumblr dashboard for each of the seven days
- Tumblr, Discord, Ao3, DMs
- Special events on certain days
- Light/dark mode
CONTENT WARNINGS
- MCYTshipping (hermit and traffic)
- 2019-2021 type ship discourse
- 2019 Hermitblr
- 2021 Hermittwt/Traffictwt
- Canon-typical innuendos
- Swearing
KNOWN ISSUES
- Posts by people who have blocked you/ you have blocked will still show up on your dash, however you should be unable to interact with them
- The restart/save/load/theme function is built in Ink. If these buttons do not show up on mobile, switch to PC
- If nothing shows up when you first start the game, press restart or load (if you have an existing save file)
PREVIEW
FUTURE?
No promises if this becomes a "full" game or not, but here are some ideas I put out on Tumblr.
CREDITS
Written in Ink by Inkle Studios. https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/
Written by Ria Riacte. Check Tumblr blog for updates and other news.
https://www.tumblr.com/riacte
https://archiveofourown.org/users/riacte/pseuds/riacte
[Redacted] server as the inspiration <3
Some quotes are taken from Rendog and InTheLittleWood.
Third Life SMP, Hermitcraft SMP, and MC Championship for the setting and inspiration.
Some content is inspired by real life happenings/posts in the Hermitcraft/Life Series fandom.
IMAGE CREDITS
Illustration by Riacte
Development log
Comments
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This is really fun! You can really tell that it was written by someone who's on tumblr a lot :P
The one thing that kinda brings it down for me is the lack of a proper UI - combined with the animations every time you switch between menus, it feels sluggish and a hassle to switch to a different menu to check information (for example, when going back to tumblr from the "check people to invite" screen). This isn't helped by there not being much visual distinction between blocks of text, so if you're scrolling up trying to find information from a post or something, it's hard to figure out which block of text could have it.
I know a lot of this is because of Ink, not any of your choices, but imo that means using Ink might be bringing the game down. And don't get me wrong, it's still a great game even in this demo state! It's just a little frustrating to navigate.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! I'll tinker a bit with the animations. Out of curiosity, what sort of visual distinction might help? A different font/font colour/background colour? (I've considered using the Tumblr and Ao3 fonts for their respective menus but felt a unified font would be more readable)
At the very least, a bar (that's a different colour than the text) between sections would be good if you're dedicated to keeping this text-only. Putting posts/sections in boxes with a different background colour would also help. But honestly, if you're open to it, having a proper UI might be the best solution. It's completely understandable if you don't want to go down that route though!
fun! i enjoyed the different characters and the tumblr scrolling, especially the nice tags "i" left on the art. felt like a real fandom experience! kindredwaves is wonderful and the starfish-wizard relationship development was fun to see happen.
Thanks for playing!