Decade
Decade is a quick interactive fiction experiment made in Twine. It's not as in-depth or polished as I usually aim for, but I had very limited time for this LD, so I just wanted to do a random short game using a simple tool.
My goal was pretty much just to see how interactive and mechanical I could make a Twine game. It's probably not very well balanced, but I'm straight up out of time! If any Twine enthusiasts are interested in how it was made, I'm also including a download for the .tws project file, which includes all the macros I used (from various online sources + some modified/added by me).
My goal was pretty much just to see how interactive and mechanical I could make a Twine game. It's probably not very well balanced, but I'm straight up out of time! If any Twine enthusiasts are interested in how it was made, I'm also including a download for the .tws project file, which includes all the macros I used (from various online sources + some modified/added by me).
Tools: Twine



Comments13
Probably my biggest suggestion would be to cut down the length of the game (or add a fast-forward option, if that's possible). It was pretty engaging for the first 2 years or so when I was trying to get my bearings and worrying about my food/water running out; displaying and constantly updating your power/food/water on every screen really provided a sense of urgency. However, at some point around year 4-5 I got to the point where I could take my hands off the keyboard, so it got pretty boring and I only continued to see the ending.
I did think you balanced the resources/upgrades pretty well, in that I felt I had to make nontrivial tradeoffs at points, so good job with that. Also, I thought the writing, both at the beginning and the end, was well-done and did a great job at setting the scene. If you added some sound effects and a background track, I could easily give this 5 stars in mood.
Nice job!
I agree with much of @qzqxq's comments - it's really engaging at first, but once you're established and have everything up and running there's not really much that you have to do.
Some random events starting in year 4 or 5 - nothing punishing, but things that would require the player to re-prioritize a bit - would keep things more engaging for duration.
The only problem I found was the fact that after 2-3 years it sort of becomes an idle game.
- jcrmartini
The game itself was enjoyable for a while, but I eventually got to a state where everything was just slowly increasing and there was really no threat or incentive to do much. I started trying to speed things up by increasing food production, using the ration decompression to get more materials and then creating more solar cells. That was fun for a bit, but ultimately there was no reason to do it.
There's a lack of progression after the first couple of minutes which really kills the game. I was hoping for some threat to appear, but none did. If you had the time to add that, I think this could be a lot better.
Overall it's a very good effort that is just missing some final pieces.