About
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It all started with a Ludum Dare. During this 72-hour game jam, we made a game that was inspired by indie games like World of Goo, Line Rider and Thomas Was Alone. My contribution during this game jam was the minimalistic art style and narrative design.
The reaction was overwhelming from the Ludum Dare crowd and demanded a full game. We gave them what they wanted, a minimalist physics based puzzle game with a deep story on the web. The player manipulates coloured lines to bend, push or throw abstract characters to their endpoints. What started out as a Ludum Dare game jam project, eventually reached over 1 million players online (String Theory 1 and 2 web games combined).
My contributions
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It took five months, next to full-time work, to launch string theory 2. My main task was the narrative design and the story. I also had a lot of influence on the art style, this was my second assigned task. I have been iterating the String Theory style since the Ludum Dare Jam. The backgrounds, colorpalets, interactables and characters are designed by me.
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In my opinion, research is import in all fields of storytelling. I started doing research on the physics topic of String theory. This was extremely complex and tough to read. It was hard to stop reading at all because it was so fascinating! I made the physic subject about String Theory limited in the story, because it would stand in the way of the gameplay and entertainment value of the story. Next to the complex subject was the hardest part of the ST instalment games, the abstract visuals. A lot of narrative tools are not as effective with these kinds of visuals. It is important to let the imagination of people fill in some of the blanks but there is a limit to that. Visual narrative was crucial for connecting the narrative to the visuals and be able to tell the personal stories of the characters. Another design constraint was the limited lines of dialogue assigned to each level. The story had to be carefully crafted to not exceed the number of words.
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Next, to the other contributions, I did help with the voice acting directing.
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We are currently expanding the String Theory universe. A new narrative challenge awaits me because the new instalment of String Theory will be on mobile. The status of the project is as follows, we are having a soft launch in America soon. Once again we are working on the project next to our day jobs. The release date is still a secret.