Made With Twine
The Safeguard
The Safeguard is an interactive fiction game about preparing for the end of the world. It served as my main project for the Interactive Narrative Advanced Seminar. I worked on it from January to April of 2024.
Process
As the sole developer of the project, I chose to use Twine due to its ease of use and flexibility. When it came to implementation, I carefully mapped out everything in the design document to show how each choice interacted with one another and influenced the different endings.
Iteration
After receiving feedback about players feeling detached from their choices, I added in the “Archivist Type” to the epilogue, a special title that each player gets describing what they prioritized and how it makes people remember them in the story. This had the effect of making players feel more attached to their choices and making each ending combination feel more distinct.
Concept
The concept for the game was for players to race against a ticking clock in choosing what items and knowledge they wished to save in the 4 days before the end of the world. The idea for the game was inspired by the Foundation book series by Isaac Asimov, with my goal being to create an interactive story where players had to choose for themselves what they believed was worth saving before being confronted with the consequences of those choices.
A screenshot of the tutorial explaining the situation
And Google Docs
The Design Process from Docs to Twine to Game
An screenshot of the epilogue where the player received “The Historian” Archivist Type