About The Game:

The half is a first-person interactional choice-based game where players’ choice affect the ending of a narration. This fictional game is based on a fantasy world where non-human and human exist together. On the whole, the world mainly centered on mermaids and humans. There is enmity between mermaids and humans but without each other, they cannot survive. Halfs are, as the name indicates, half mermaids and half humans, who are neither one thing nor the other.
Mostly, the story is in Dean’s, a protagonist, perspective who experiences a ruthless world due to being the half. I highlighted this by making him a powerless and helpless character, who only focuses on survival. The overall theme is dark, therefore there are no 'happy' endings. Players will experience a sense of alienation throughout the play to understand the life of a person who does not belong to any groups. 

The Concept:

About Hamsrock:
The nation of this world is called Hamsrock and the ruling capital is called Atstall. The nation is heavily devastated by limited resources and pollution, which shaped the extreme class differentiation, where only 1% of the population(high-class) can access it. The nation is controlled under the absolute power of the Goddess.
A third of Hamsrock is polluted. This made the land crowded beyond capacity. Some people, mostly lower-classes, are traveling like Gypsies to find homes but are mostly rejected by landowners. 

About Atstall:
Atstall is a floating island on top of the bottom nation of Hamsrock. It is a place where only ‘chosen’ people from the Goddess could live in the city. The citizens of Atstall never experienced a day without sufficient supplies, services, and basic needs. 
Atstall is originally mermaid’s graveyard. It floats in the air due to mermaid’s remains. Mermaid’s corpses have magical powers like their heart, however, those powers must be controlled by the creature with the mermaid's heart to make the city stable (otherwise, the city will explode due to unstable power). For mermaids, it is easy to maintain Atstall without any trouble but Goddess, who is the half, has trouble to keep the Atstall float.

About the Goddess:
Goddess is the absolute ruler of Hamsrock. She is the half but she veils this truth to citizens, except her faithful knights. 
Because she is the half, she only has half of the power, therefore, she needs another half to balance Atstall to be floated (This is the main reason why Goddess was searching for the main character). 

About the High-class:
Approximately, the high-class is only one percent of the whole population. 
Their greatest fear is to be exiled from this city. According to the characteristics of the island country, their community is conservative that they do not accept the newcomers.  

About the Low-class:
They are majorities of people who live at the bottomland of Hamsrock. Their rights and resources are deprived by the high-class. 
Goddess brainwashed them to believe mermaids are threatening creatures.
The lower class is always out of land, resources, food, and houses.

About Mermaids:
Mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a human and the tail of a fish. They have greater physicality and power than humans in general.  They usually live in the ocean but during the lunar eclipse day, they swim in the air to reach Atstall for their final exit ( It is their instinct to go to their last resting place before their death).
Mermaids have magical power in their hearts. Their abilities are similar to psychokinesis, but they are not able to lift living creatures. 
Mermaids are only females, which they need males to breed their children. Therefore they allure men during the ‘Mating’ seasons. 

About Halfs:
Halfs are the creatures born in between humans and mermaids. Usually, it is impossible to see halfs because they get killed by mermaids as soon as they are born. 
Halfs look just like humans. The only difference is that they live twice as long as humans.

The technology of this world:
High-class and Low-class have a different standard of technology. The world has futuristic technologies like phones, airplanes, light bulbs, computers(not the internet), and etc. However, all those technologies are not generated by electricity, but the magical powers stored in the hearts of mermaids.
Goddess hunts mermaids with her army to refill the power generator in order to operate machines.

About the Pirates:
Due to the polluted ocean and mermaids, pirates shifted their gear to the sky. They rob trade plane for a living. They sometimes sell mermaids as merchandise.

About the Black Market:
The Black Market opens every year where the moon passes directly behind the earth and the moon became red. The only place to get the most unusual and unique treasures that perhaps does not exist in the world. Lots of brokers trade their goods and pirates sell and buy weapons.

Inspiration:

I was inspired by The Pirate of the Caribbean 4. Their portrayal of mermaids as an attractive, alluring and beautiful creature that hunts humans using their charm was a perfect image for mermaids in my game.
I was also inspired by the comic book, Kaizoku to Ningyo. The way this comic portrays mermaids as merchandise fits my concept where people do not respect other races. 

What went right:

Visuals:
Unexpectedly, the visual unified with the story and the settings. My visuals of fonts, background, and buttons harmonized to cause a water feeling, or at least, the mood of mermaids and pirates. When I was deciding the background and the typography, I concentrated on the feeling of mermaids, however, the outcome was more like an ocean.

Loops:
I successfully created the story loop by using the Branch and Bottleneck pattern to avoid the linear narrative structure and obliterating of past choices. I had no prior experiences of Ink before, which made me challenging how to connect different scenes to other different scenes. I still do not know how to use variables. For sure I am willing to use a different method to create efficient loops. 
I created the options where players can skip all the pieces of information and go to the next scene to avoid unwanted readings. These choices vary the pacing of the game.

Concept:
I have more than enough background stories to smoothly connect the concepts and the narrations. It opens the possibility of expanding the game into different versions and into different perspectives. However, if I had an grammar/narrative assistance, I would add more details to the characters, world, and environment of the nation.

What went wrong:

Too much info for the small game:
Substantially in a short narrative game, I loaded with too much information, on top of that, I failed to distribute that information into different scenes. In one scene, players are provided with options either reading a book or just skip. If the player chose to skip, players will miss important details of the story. However, it is still manageable to play through the whole game without reading that information. Strangely, I missed the appearance of the main character. I could at least add the appearance of the main character to convey the audiences that the halfs do not have a fishtail.

Grammars/just not a writer:
Grammars and terms that I chose distract the understanding of the reading as well as dive into the setting or the character. Due to my lack of English skill, I was struggling to write a flavourful story. It was challenging to give characterful personalities to characters. Again, this is due to the shortage of grammar. Also, it was hard to write the language of pirates and higher-beings, which ruined the overall feeling of the story as well as the characters' personalities. 

Too many single choices:
I had too many single choices where players felt their choices does not affect the story. After a while, players felt tedious by clicking single buttons that they end up not reading the description/story. On top of that, I placed too many long paragraphs that loosen the concentration of the narration. 

What I learned:

Most certainly I will study the fantasy world from well-known novels like Hobbits or A Song of Ice and Fire. I do have a prior understanding of the fantasy world, however, I never read the English written version. This is the reason why I was lacking at the terms and phrasing. From this project, I learned that I should research on the topic before I even start to write the world bible. I understand why writers spend so much time experiencing and learning the different cultures, religions, and environment in order to write a cohesive story.

Using ink was an interesting and fun experience that I learned how to plan the story arc and how to connect different scenes using booleans/text form instead of a diagram. Also, I realized that there are so many different standard patterns I could incorporate in the future game.

As classic as it sounds, time management is such a crucial point to successfully designing the game. I spend so much time planning the world bible and storylines that I end up facing time constraints to build the game. This resulted in shortening the scenes, endings, and choices. In the future, I will definitely write a time schedule to give myself deadlines. 

Next Step:

Most certainly, I will expand the game to fit all the concepts I have come up with. In order to do this, I want to add different characters' perspectives because I portrayed the main character as powerless half who is dragged by the situation most of the time. This could be achieved by creating different versions. For example, I will create the background story in Goddess point of view that how she developed the power(electricity) as the next project.

A proper map of the nation and the illustrations of characters and settings would help the understanding of the game. Also, I want to add the sound of typing while the text is individually showing up on the screen, in this way, players will read the text without feeling boredom. To complete the game fully, I want to as the menu scene and exit button.

*Finally, I will work with the story writer next time when I build the IF project!!*