The Creative Process #38 - Soft Landing

It's late in the evening, Australian Eastern Standard Time, 1st of September. In the future, as far as the UK and America is concerned. In a few hours the 2025 Interactive Fiction competition will open for everyone.

I have two games submitted, Anne of Green Cables and Cart. It took me about a two years and a month and two days to make them. Roughly two years of experimenting, planning and initial writing for Anne, with probably a good month all up on dedicated writing and artwork. I was talking about the initial ideas way back in #17, not long after my last IF Comp game in 2023. Cart, however, fell out in basically two days.

My wife is getting used to this new creative cycle. Like she did last time, she took the kids to a picnic far away, giving me a solid, silent six hours at home to work on my game just before it was due. She kept a quiet eye on me. "This time," she said, "You seem a lot more relaxed about it."

It's true. In the last two months of development of Hand Me Down, I was putting in monstrous hours putting the project together. I was hurriedly adding content and stripping it out, writing pages and pages of text, and generally burning out.

This time, Cart was already finished. Anne needed finishing, but it was just writing. I had taken care of the stress of any actual technical challenges long ago with prototypes and integration. It was just writing and I knew what I needed to write. I was even happy about what I had to write (although the very sad Chapter 8 was still something to endure).

The game was finished five hours and fifty minutes into my day without the kids. I got to run through it at high speed to make sure it was possible to get from start to finish. It was, so it was done.

Polish for Anne

I still spent my free time until submission polishing and cleaning things up. A number of typos were uncovered, deciphered and fixed.

It had been a while since I had read some of the earlier chapters, and a number of jokes still made me chuckle. I hope they land for readers.

Admittedly I hadn't had enough editing and polishing time that I had the chance to grow sick of the game. If given more time, it'd get more polish. Then again, if given infinite time, it'd get infinite polish. It might not shine significantly more, though.

Overall, I'm pretty happy how it turned out. It's not the platonic ideal of the project, but no results ever are. I'm especially proud of the artwork that I did myself, and I think the styling throughout is nice.

Polish for Cart

Cart is such a weird project. Several times in my life a piece will just come together incredibly swiftly, and while they are very much a project by me, there's a hint of the alien about it. It's a very different kind of art, and not one I can do at will. It's not even that the muses are talking. It's like a ghost walked through me, possessed me for a short time, and continued on. But the ghost is, like, me.

Cart is one of these projects. It sounds weird but I don't quite understand Cart. The more I tried to polish or change it, the more it turned to sand between my fingers. I was reluctant to mess with it with my logical, reasoning brain.

I had written it over a year ago and was afraid to do anything with it. It keeps promising an indistinct danger to me, and that's not something I really want to invite. But it also sat on my creative shelf, wanting to be read. So I instinctively submitted it to IF Comp this year. We'll see if that's a good idea.

Cart is exceptionally dark for me. It's a reaction to the way the world's been going for the past few years. Only a few people have seen it before I submitted it.

When the news of the UK Online Safety Act rose in the media lately, I was a bit concerned of what submitting Cart to IF Comp would mean. It's definitely not safe for kids. I worried that its inclusion might bring doom to the door of IF Comp, such was my belief in it being a cursed project.

I considered withdrawing it, and asked the IF Comp organizers for advice. It was up to me, they said. They never once suggested that I censor it. I did rewrite a chunk of it, though. The game had a strong implication that was really quite horrible. It was important for the ending, but all things considered, I thought I could rewrite those elements to be less problematic. And I did. In an hour. It works and I don't know if the original idea is better, but the piece as a whole is something I'm more comfortable putting out there.

Just prior to the competition there is a lot of discussion amongst the authors given the competition has to (due to the legal issues) deal with the UK Online Safety Act. The organizers have been, in my opinion, great and discussed the situation with me (and 70-80 other writers). Cart is under a geoblock because of its content. UK residents can't access it. I hope they vote in better politicians next time. And, I hope Australia doesn't follow suit.

Under a reading of the very vague but potentially punitive Act, Anne could be worthy of a geoblock. However we've decided that under a charitable interpretation it should be okay.

I agree with both decisions. It's a shame the UK might miss out on a wide swathe of the entries. I suspect no-one in China or Saudi Arabia will be able to play Cart, either, but that worries me less.

Polishing oneself

In 2023 I went into IF Comp, determined to have a positive attitude. It worked then. I'm going into 2025's with the same. Despite all the potential trials and tribulations, I'm happy for the comp, encouraging of newcomers and just dedicated to having a good time.

I hope to do a bit of reviewing of other authors' work. Reviewing and judging pieces that might miss out on UK attention seems like a good thing to even the scales. I hope to write up a post-mortem for each game, because it's a nice way to draw a line under the work. Both games surprise and worry me, as if they are children I've just sent out into the world hoping that I've given them the best chance I can.

But it's not all interactive fiction. I also hope to just chill out and return to hobbies that I've put aside to focus on interactive fiction. I have been thinking about a weird west campaign for my roleplaying buddies. I've been keen on solo RPGing and writing that up for people's entertainment. For the past many months I've been careful what TV shows and movies I've been watching so it wouldn't ruin my games' aesthetic. I celebrated submitting my games with the very different and very awesome K-Pop Demon Hunters.

Please keep an eye on IF Comp's website. Play the lovely games, there should be a lot of them. Vote. Review. Send a new author a little email. Donate to the Colossal Fund. Donate a cool prize if you can.

And in general, enjoy a bit of creativity in a world keen on dismantling and disruption.