Ice Planet is my most ambitious interactive fiction to date clocking in at over 70k words. This is also now my third interactive fiction in as many years. I started working on Ice Planet shortly after I had finished my last interactive fiction back on June 23 of 2022.
For those who don't want to read about the process and everything else just jump right into the story.
Back in 2021, I wanted to find a new format to do my storytelling in. I would sometimes go off on these grand adventures in video games and other times just in my mind in these little worlds and universes I would create. I needed a new medium to express myself thought. Even more so for my worlds.
I ended up running into interactive fiction. I read a couple when I was growing up. I never thought I’d try and write my own one day. That is however what I did.
I ended up looking up quite a few different software solutions back in 2021 to write an interactive fiction so you could host it in web browsers. I ended up selecting ChoiceScript.
For that first interactive fiction, it was not going to be that complex. Due mostly to how the licensing for using the program is I ended up releasing it for free on my Itchio page. While I was hoping to have it hosted on the program's site itself. I did not meet the minimum word count and it required having the interactive fiction whitelisted.
I mostly wanted to play around with writing in the special scripting langue it used and see how it went from there. It turns out I just did not care much for it. I did not like all the extra time I spent formatting it. It did not solve the organizational issues I was running into. I was not a huge fan of the licensing agreement it and many other interactive fiction software come with.
I did not let this keep me from still wanting to play around with interactive fiction further. This time I picked to just make it out of posts. Something that would be in quite a small area of the world in my mind. That is when Forbidden Lockbox was born.
My announcement posts states it was 34 posts long which created all kinds of interesting issues I had to solve from organization to how to set up the player moving around in the story. This is what I really needed to try and build a foundation that I could use going forward.
While I was thrilled when Forbidden Lockbox was released. I wanted to produce something much bigger. I had no idea at the time just how massive my next work Ice Planet was going to be. At some points, it felt like Ice Planet was never going to end.
While I started Ice Planet fresh after the release of @forbiddenlockbox it was not as smooth sailing as I was hoping. At this point with it being my third one had I developed quite a system in place. What I was not expecting is the major writer’s block I found myself dealing with so early into the project.
I ended up writing this killer intro to the interactive fiction that even made me think dang I’m going to build an insane world out of this. That world was already going all over the place. Playing over and over again in my mind as my worlds often do.
In a couple of posts for the project, I got quite backhanded by writer's block. I have replayed over and over again in my mind how I wanted the next part of Ice Planet to go. Yet, every time went to write it the words would not flow from my mind down to the keyboard and into the document itself. Other times it never came out right.
I felt it was quite a critical thing I was trying to write. That I had to get right about how I wanted to give a lot more meaning to choice than I have in my other interactive fiction. I ended up wasting well over a month not typing a single word. It was awful.
I would oftentimes just be there looking at a blank page without a single word typed. It was rather infuriating that I felt like I was never going to finish this project and this would just be yet another wasted effort of an endeavor that would never see the light of day.
After some internal debate with myself, I decided since this was interactive fiction I could just jump ahead in the story. I could just come back later and fill in the details and write up that spot I got stuck in.
It was not till almost the end. Then I had nearly 65k words of this written up before I returned to where the first writer's block I hit into this project was. Without a moment’s thought, I wrote it. Like it was nothing.
This would not be the last time either that I would hit writer's block in this project. Thankfully I learned with how massive this thing was getting that I could just go work on a different part. That made it rather fun.
I would also take a few breaks from the project over time that would sometimes last many weeks if not unintendedly a bit longer. It was quite an ordeal to keep up my normal writing and add this into the mix with how demanding this project started to turn into.
This just pushed me to want to work harder on anything else I was doing. So that I could if I wanted to spend a week or two with the time I have for writing only working on this project and not thinking of much else. This also helped any time I hit writer's block as I had my usual gaming content to work on as well when I needed a break from this insanity.
While it was nice having two interactive fiction under my belt now. I found the organization systems I had set up were ill-prepared to deal with a 70k word and 169 posts or so story. I learned quite early on that I would have to invest a lot more time in trying to keep track of things.
One of the hardest parts of interactive fiction is the fact that the player could have quite a few choices and even arcs to be going down. That I would often be writing and putting down placeholders for things I have not even started to think about just to continue the story.
While many times I would stop and try and write as many forks in the story. There would oftentimes be such massive arcs where the story split way that are over 10k words. That was not just something you could quickly work on and then switch back to the other side of things.
I had headed into this knowing this time around I would need to work within a purely number system for the post part. So I wrote down in Excel different number ranges for different arcs of the story. I later felt I’d try and fill in any gaps later on in both the story and now what I was seeing as the page numbers.
This however was not quite enough. Many other things were going on in Ice Planet that I’d need to write myself little notes to remember about. I also don’t have the best memory in the world a bit of a cheese hole for a brain. The further I went into this 70k world project the more I learned I needed even better notes to remind myself so I would not always need to be rereading what I’ve already written.
This was quite critical when I’d hit writer’s block or get burnt out from the project itself and go on quite a break. Sometimes I’d return and the story itself would be a bit foggy till I reread my notes and the other organizational steps I had taken. This quickly allowed me to get back into the swing of things.
I also found around the 10k word mark that trying to work on a project this size in a single document was starting to be too huge of an issue. So I started to take each of the numbered sections and put them all in their separate document.
That however quickly pointed out another issue. What happens when I needed to look at something I’ve already written up? I decided that I would not be actively working on a single massive document as I was creating this interactive fiction. I however still needed a single master document that I could look over and even find things to make corrections or decided what needed rewriting.
So now I was using Excel sheets for my numbering systems leaving myself notes. I was writing in smaller document files to work on single pages of the interactive fiction. I was then moving it all over to a master document.
That still was not enough. In the other two interactive fiction I had created they never got to the size where I felt like I needed to make maps of an area. Needless to say, I am quite bad at making any kind of map.
There was more embarrassment in the basics that I’d create in a paint application than anything else. They allowed me to visually see how I had sometimes quite massive areas all laid out. I could also add numbers to represent the individual pieces to make it even easier to see.
While I won’t be releasing any of them as they are quite crude. They would also be giving anyone quite an advantage as they show important locations, how to get through certain areas, and many other things.
This I felt was the final straw I needed in my organization bundle back. While I would many times spend hours visually working on my silly little maps of areas that would sometimes feel like a waste of time. Looking back at it now I wish I had done that much sooner.
Another big thing for this interactive fiction is I wanted to give the choices the reader makes a bit more meaning. A decent chunk of that was going to be based on a resource system. The other part was sometimes giving the player further information they could use elsewhere or allowing them to save time or have an advantage based on what option they picked.
The resource system would have to be an honor system and something the reader would be keeping track of on their own. I did not want to have to set up a website, have long-term costs, or mess around with any coding (I’ve learned over the years I suck badly at coding). While many interactive fiction programs allow you to create such things I already learned I did not care for the one I invested enough time into learning how to use.
I’ll admit there were many times I was considering just tossing the entire idea out the window of a resource system. It is however something I kept in. If I ever do one of these again I’m not sure if I’ll include something like it again. It did change a few times over the 70k words that I wrote into what it is now.
I also wanted the reader to be going along in the story and come across choices they might not always have an option of taking. Some of these required you to have found something while others were like surprises because of a certain route you took. Some required backtracking and go get what was needed while others were set in stone.
While I’ll admit it might not be the best idea ever to have someone needing to backtrack to get something they needed. There were times I wanted to allow the reader to explore everything an area had to offer as you may never choose that option to be there again.
Finally, I wanted to make choices having meaning in a way so you could go through this interactive fiction a few times over and have a different adventure. Quite early on you will go off into different arcs of this interactive fiction and you may never have another option to explore other areas. Some of them last for 5k-10k+ words or so.
I loved the idea of someone getting to the end of this interactive fiction and maybe they only read 25k or 30k of the 70k words that are in this. Some paths are quite long if you make certain choices. This entire thing can be about the journey and not the end destination if the reader makes that choice.
I was even considering quite early on allowing the reader too quickly if they wanted to make it about getting to the end and not the journey as well. I ended up removing quite an early option but I kept in some other options that can be found a bit further into the story itself.
I felt all of this gave a lot more meaning to making a choice than just death and forcing the reader to start over again. Granted, I do love killing the reader and there are a few deaths early on. I can see some people if they choose to honor the death start off going elsewhere while others might want to go back to where they were and take the other path.
Something I wish I had in my other interactive fiction was always artwork. I tried using different solid images of color in my last interactive to represent some different things. That did not quite have the effect I wanted. While I was tempted to go with the royalty-free stock photos option there ended up being quite the development in the AI artwork scene.
I’ll admit I had a lot of internal struggles if I even wanted to use AI artwork at all. While yes I could sometimes spend over an hour just to get a single image I was going to use in my interactive fiction. There is just something about it that I feel rather uneasy about.
For this interactive fiction, I must have generated over 2k images. It was not just finding the right words and imputing them into a text box. Even that was more times than not far off what I wanted. There was a lot of time spent using editing tools that were within the AI platform I was using to create the artwork in the first place.
While it was tempting to try and draw the artwork. I was the kind of kid in art class who needed to take home just about every project and put in an extra 20 or 30 hours on top of the time allowed in the classroom. Even then I was never happy with what I created. I am also quite a slow drawer in the first place.
I also did not want to go without artwork either. I put so much time and effort into this project I wanted to take it to the next level. I even considered for a while trying to hire someone to make the work. I quickly learned a lot of those places people were just dumping the description of the order into AI and charging you for it.
Having artwork also allows me to bring this further into Web 3. The biggest issue with interactive fiction is you can’t just release one post a day. There are far too many forks and arcs in the storyline someone might be waiting weeks or even months for the choice they made to have their next post. At best, I could have released this entire thing in three separate parts over three weeks. Even then that is not ideal. As I rather have the start be one of the last posts made so you can just jump into it from there. Not require someone who comes across it later on needing to scroll to the last post to start. Not all Hive frontends have the pin-a-post feature.
I will be having a further post coming out about the AI artwork in something else I have plans for it. That idea might also be a total flop.
Words cannot express how exhausted I am yet still energetic at the release of this. A part of me is also rather sad that this project is coming to an end. In the end, it is nice to be done with something that took a lot of passion to see through.
Content is written by @Enjar of @Enjargames. Cover and other AI artwork is created using Playgroundai.
