jon ingold
@joningold
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Writer/Narrative Designer: ink, @HeavensVault , Overboard!, 80 Days, Sorcery!, Over the Alps, @AHighlandSong . Novelist? Co-founder @inkleStudios . He/him
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Joined August 2010
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[9]
One little exception of the embargo due to print deadlines: EDGE magazine loved the game and gave it
⭐️ 9/10 ⭐️
YALDI! Thanks
@edgeonline
!
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This post also demonstrates a tiny feature I'm ridiculously pleased with - our "use your inventory to solve puzzles" system. So, right. In a normal adventure game there are two standards - direct prompt ("Use your knife here!") and open bag ("Open your bag and try stuff!")
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It’s finally happening. Four years work.
Heaven’s Vault is fully dynamic, fully authored, self-assembling long-form interactive narrative.
Every choice of make, explicit or implicit, feeds the story machine. Every story has an ending; and no two stories are quite the same.
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Huge congrats to the
@failbettergames
team who have achieved something I've literally never seen before - their new game is *back* in New and Noteworthy on Steam a week after launch thanks to a smart update; and the review score is back in the green. Sick work.
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PSA: inkle will never hire you if you use ChatGPT to write your cover letter. Especially when it attributes our games to the wrong developer and you apply to the wrong studio.
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Oh, fine. Systems are bad at telling stories, because they’re repetitive, predictable and endless, while stories need surprise, delight and resolution. Systems are best used to create a space for stories to happen inside.
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@fullbright
When we shipped 80 Days, about 10% of the cities marked on the globe (including most of America) were impossible to actually reach and had no content. We only actually put them in as part of an update 2 years later.
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Linear narrative: have this card
Branching narrative: pick a card. You can keep it!
CYOA: pick a card. WRONG.
Open-world RPG: pick a card. It’s over there
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I’m talking at this year’s GDC about including failure in narrative games without leaning on repetition.
This for me is A Big Unsolved One, but we have a few ideas...
It’s a nifty 30-min summit (and summits are free to watch post event)
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12 years, 17 games, 4 books, 2 writing tools, loads of great people and more project-completion mugs than I can fit in my cupboard..!
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This has been mentioned by exactly no reviewers but I think it’s our bestest best innovation and was also really hard to do
Something about Heaven's Vault that probably won't be mentioned in many reviews but I think is fantastic - every time you load it, it reminds you where you are and what's happened, rather than expecting you to remember it all. (This is from the very, very start, so no spoilers.)
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The most prominently featured, highest-rated review of 80 Days on Steam is, of course, negative. It complains the game makes it hard to see all the content.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand this position. If seeing it all is your metric why, then, are you not reading a book?
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Indie dev advice: always make sure your game has a truly wonderful soundtrack because when you’re close to done you will hate everything about your game with a deep and savage passion, and having a great soundtrack to listen to will be the only perk
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@fullbright
The joke was on us: When we finally put the cities in, we had to write a load *more* new content as well, so that the update would look like it had something in it
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First up: Sparkling Dialogue - how to make interactive, linear, conversations which still feel significant and include player choice.
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Here's a nice little design thing we did on Highland.
The game's set in the wild where there's weather, which is supposed to hurt the player. So we stuck up a health bar that goes down in the rain unless you find shelter (as per No Man's Sky et al.) Good design? Er, no.
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Now Highland is out, and there's nothing more to do, i wanted to reflect a bit on what the game is about, from a writer's POV. It is a difficult set-up for a story: there's no antagonist; there's no crisis; there's only a beginning and an ending, and the ending has to vary
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From the inkle bookshop FAQs, and why I should never be allowed to run any kind of shop.
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So exciting to have A Highland Song finally laced up and ready to leave home. It is:
- our biggest game since Heaven's Vault (wasn't meant to be, but)
- most music (original AND licensed)
- most actors
- literally the most research (English kids learn NO scottish history)
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Announcement! I’m thrilled to be able to finally say that (a) Over The Alps is out very soon and that (b) I wrote it (c) in collaboration with the astrologastically brilliant
@haikus_by_KN
!
We’ve got fantastic news! Over the Alps will be available on
@AppleArcade
in the coming weeks! 📱
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IT’S DONE. IT’S REALLY DONE. IT’S NOT BROKEN OR PATCHY OR ABOUT RIGHT. IT IS DONE. WE ARE STILL ALIVE. ARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH
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but as everyone knows, the correct answer is *always* 3 choices. So what our system does is say "Use something...", then gives 3 choices. If the right object is in your possession, it'll be in the three. The others will be plausible objects, if there are any, and then randomised
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i just saw a link to "the 8 best games to include archaeology" and it doesn't have Heaven's Vault or Outer Wilds in it. I think maybe inkle will release Heaven's Vault again in a year or so's time and call it a new release
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And since most puzzles have multiple solutions (category based; who cares which knife you use?) you can strip through puzzles, clear out the ones you can't solve yet, and avoid inventory overwhelm.
And why yes, it is all written in ink. Thank you for asking.
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I just noticed how the people who say “in twenty years neural nets will write novels” never seem to say “in twenty years neural nets will write computer code”.
Because code has to be precisely correct to work.
And of course, novels are absolutely nothing like that.
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i've been keeping this very quiet but I write for EDGE now!
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If you have only one item you haven't dismissed, she'll just offer that directly. If you've used an item successfully, she'll go straight there.
In short, Moira has ideas, and you prune them down; so as your inventory balloons, the choices never do.
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The only times we ever had players write in asking us for an option to “turn off” content they found upsetting, it was always from people asking us to turn off the homosexual men in 80 Days.
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(crosspost from the better place) i'm kinda fascinated by the idea of replayable narrative; it's something we've done in all our games since the beginning. Not "see all five endings", but something more subtle - a sense that the game is still alive, even when you've finished it.
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If you pick right, great. If you don't, and try again, Moira will switch out the thing that didn't work. If it's in a whole category that doesn't work, she'll drop all of that category ("I can't cut this AT ALL!" - so no knives, then).
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Serious design point: most people don’t finish most games. Most adventure game players don’t finish most adventure games. HV is often described by game people as having weird pacing or frustrating design - but almost all those choices are made for this goal: finishing
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Literally overwhelmed by the response to the novel. We sold so many that we broke the printers website and the payment processor flagged us as fraudulent; so we’re now manually placing orders as they come in and also trying to work through the backlog.
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For a game, we need a large collection of terrible short love poetry couplets. If you’ve got one that you think we could include, drop it as a reply!
Here’s one to set the tone:
“My wonderful man, my promised land /
Strong and supple as a side of ham”
(T&Cs below)
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I realised earlier this year that I spend almost all my time writing interactive dialogue lines, but I’ve never examined or talked about the business of actually doing that.
So here’s a talk, for
@AdvXConf
, which takes a scene and writes it - and rewrites it - until it works.
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I’m absolutely floored.
Congratulations to this year's nominees for the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Videogame writing award. They are -
Heaven’s Vault (Jon Ingold)
Over the Alps (Jon Ingold, Katharine Neil and Nick Bush) Telling Lies (Sam Barlow and Amelia Gray)
@TheWritersGuild
#gamewriting
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<guy with a thought>: using AI to do the NPC dialogue for your game
<guy with a better thought>: using AI to the non-significant filler NPC dialogue, but having a writer do the bits where things happen
<guy with an excellent thought>: cutting the filler
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“As an academic study, archaeology is rife with colonialist narratives, and the game manages to subvert that by using it not as a means to exploit another culture, but rather, to inform the... skills needed to investigate and dismantle an existing power structure.”
Heaven's Vault is a surprisingly self-aware game about archaeology
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It feels very emotional to have
@heavensvault
launching again. It is by far the biggest and most complex thing I’ve ever worked on, and those years were really hard, but they were also really happy.
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By the waters, but it's finished!
430 pages, 176k words.
It's the world of the game, and almost a plot of it. Some things are clarified, some re-imagined. It does explain:
- who Mazwai
- why Enkei is so
- what happened to One
- whose feet
- how Elborethian labour markets work
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Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I just downloaded this game called Heaven’s Vault onto my PS4
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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It's out! Welcome to THE FOREVER LABYRINTH, a full-length replayable inkle-like made using the vast art catalogue of
@googlearts
!
.... There once was
a labyrinth
at the end of time ....
🚨 ANNOUNCING 🚨
THE FOREVER LABYRINTH
An inkle game
In collaboration with
@googlearts
Free to play right now, in browser or the GAC app
🖼️
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“Narrative Strategy”
- Totally dynamic narrative: authored components, assembled on the fly
- Different combinations of characters play out scenes differently
- Gameplay drives narrative drives gameplay
- My head is a puddle
Announcing...
👑⚔️👑 PENDRAGON 👑⚔️👑
Our brand new Narrative Strategy game, coming this summer.
Rally the Round Table. 🔁 RT appreciated!
Wishlist on steam:
#indiedev
#indiegames
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I do find it a bit surreal to be referred to as “a team of talented writers” but maybe it is explains why I talk to myself so much
"Inkle's talented writers choose their words carefully, sparking wild theories in your imagination but never fully confirming whether you are right"
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If you don't have any sensible items, she'll offer specific choices - "cut the rope with my front door key" but also a "I've got nothing" choice, which marks the whole inventory as invalid and makes the choice go away until you pick something else up.
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I’d elaborate on this: branching is only there to prevent the game undermining the emotional reality of a choice moment *and nothing else*. You branch only because you have to, so as not to cheat the player
Nice piece of advice for narrative design from
@joningold
- “Don’t think about what the consequence of a choice is, but think about what the moment of choice feels like.”
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Writing starts with a quote that serves as a beacon for the rest of the voice. In 80 Days, it was "I have entered into the service of a new gentleman. It would seem he is a gambling man." In Overboard, it was "I told him I could see dolphins playing in the wake of the boat."
I must have climbed the hill behind the house a hundred times.
I know every stone.
But after that hill, there's another...
... and then, another again...
And after all that, then that's the sea.
... And I've never been there.
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This is a thing which is true
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Both have their flaws - the first feels like you're not solving things (though maybe you hoped the prompt would be there and when it is, that's pleasing... but when you're behind the game, it feels dumb) - and the second is fine if you know what to do, but can make you feel dumb
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Overboard! is a run-based game, in which you build up strategies for various scenes where the detail matters. So making replaying solved sections painless was really important.
Here’s how we went about it.
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The technique described here is ridiculously simple - so simple we didn't really think it could possibly work - but it turns out to be, in fact, absolutely great, and makes the whole game much more seamless and responsive without adding... well, any complexity at all.
New blog post on the making of
@AHighlandSong
by our narrative director
@joningold
!
This one is about a powerful new technique we're using in ink - Autocut!
🔗👉
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.
@BAFTAGames
should introduce an award for “best short game”, only eligible for 2h or less playtime.
There’s lots of interesting stuff going on in short form work that rarely breaks the surface.
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I’m done. 163k words, which is a bit long, but then it does wrap up 4,000 years of history and contain a language.
Really interesting to plot a book rather than a game - you have to justify stuff a lot more; when a game gives you an action you take it because it’s there...
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In all seriousness this kind of edgelord behaviour fucks me right off. I legitimately do not understand why I or any other customers should care about the opinion of someone who obviously bought the wrong game for them.
A Highland Song has earned its first negative steam review from a customer, so it's sadly no longer 100% positive. In the interests of balance, we thought we should show it to you.
Here it is.
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I’ve heard multiple accounts that corroborate this
An anon account has been naming abusers in the games industry. Alexis Kennedy is one of them. I can't speak to the motives of the anon, but Alexis is a well-known predator in the games industry. I have been warning people about him for years.
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Today’s bug-fix: if someone fell in love with Lancelot, sometimes Guinevere would suddenly appear and declare that she could never love Lancelot while killing everyone else on the party, until Lancelot fled and bled to death off screen (presumably of a broken heart)
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Every finished game feels like a miracle; like a surprise; like a gift. Where did that come from? That didn’t actually *work*, did it?
Making games when the world is going mad is a strange thing to do. But it also makes me proud. We do what we love. We hope you love it too.
👑 Headline - inkle's next game is done
🎥 Trailer - cut
🖼️ Screenshots - chosen
🦟 Bugs - squished
#⃣ Version - 1.0.0
📅 Launch Date - circled three times in red pen.
📢 Announcement - 24 hours and counting!
Stories will be told of this...
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#loveindies
Steam reviews matter - silly, really, but they do. Here’s one that mattered to me today
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With Pendragon basically done I feel I’ve discovered what my thesis is: that while systems aren’t good at creating events, they are good at juxtaposing them.
So while a computer doesn’t know that grumpy badgers are funny and strangers holding hands is intriguing...
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I dream of writing something as superb as this
My (24 F) boyfriend (25M) sleeps in a "nest" of clothes and towels and refuses to buy a bed.
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Imagine a detective game where every character remembers what everyone says and what they’ve seen.
Where suspects can be bribed, threatened and cajoled for information - but will resent you for it.
Where no one - it turns out - is quite as they seem.
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New year. 23 was productive for me but without much result; I wrote four things - but then only
one came out. I did a keynote - but the video never went up. Still, I’m lucky - I still have a job, and space to work, and a reputation of sorts
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The only thing I think it's missing is a nice little icon of a rucksack to go with.
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Good article on a recent trend - time loop games - which are something that I think about a lot when doing narrative design. The loop idea is handy as it solves the key game-narrative problem: the Problem of Failure.
I spoke to the developers of Outer Wilds, Elsinore, and 12 Minutes to find out how and why time loops work so well in video games! (I've been working on this article for weeks, so please give it a read!)
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Launching a game during a social media bonfire is very difficult. If you're seeing this, imagine you saw it five times from multiple sources you trust and like
🤠 Whispers In the West is available on Steam 🎉 🎉 RT appreciated 💕
🎮 Co-op murder mystery game
🔍 Point-and-click adventure
👭 Play it solo or with friends
🤠 Six mystery cases
From $4.49, and 50% off on the six-case bundle during launch week
👉
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Looking back over the year in games the thing that strikes me is it’s been an incredible year for non-combat based games.
Putting aside puzzle games, we’ve seen two big games on every end-of list (Outer Wilds and Disco); with Telling Lies, Heavens Vault, Sayonara on many...
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In Highland there's a lot of mountains (~40) and you can go to any you can see. In practice, it's in layered levels BUT there are many ways from one layer to the next. So we have a pacing problem...
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Hey
@betterthemask
@joethephish
this is really lovely, do you remember when we were kids and made a game together?
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Have a thing in our next game the player can do which I think quite possibly has never been a thing you could do in a game ever before.
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if inkle were looking for testers for their next release, and you felt like testing a game, would you consider reading a tweet about it (this one) and sending an email to jon
@inklestudios
.com?
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I feel for the studio having been through similar things; though one note for other indies out there - selling 60k copies is *very good* and banking on higher is a very risky bet
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Deduction mechanics in games - what are they for, and do they ever work?
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First proof copy of book one!
(Immediately rewrites the first paragraph)
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Today is launch day!
This isn't my first novel, but it's the first one I've been confident putting in front of people and saying, you're going to enjoy this. Still: I don't get impostor syndrome writing games any more, but I get it a LOT writing prose.
🎉 It's time to return to the Nebula!
HEAVEN'S VAULT is now a two-part sci-fi epic that reimagines, deepens and extends the award-winning game.
OUT NOW:
Newcomer or fan, set sail for a world of robots, fallen Empires, lost language and ancient secrets.
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The lady and the robot have been gently, affectionately arguing with each other in my head for years now. Neither understands people but both want to; through each other they begin.
So weird to think that other people out there are now having those moments.
I’ll miss them.
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@CEDUK_MEDIA
@MEDIAprogEU
@italicpig
@factoryweather
@BrainandNerd
This is an appalling decision. There must be hundreds of worthy game studios not run by abusers known to sexually predate on their employees. Your funding process needs reviewing, now.
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I remember this panel as being mostly drowning in impostor syndrome (and, er, not feeling well) but I didn’t hate this clip, so that’s something
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Yes it’s f*cking political
Pendragon from inkle Lets You Create Your Own Arthurian Legend, with a Tragic Brexit Twist
#Features
#VideoGames
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My recent GDC talk on Overboard! and detective game design is up free on
@gdcvault
.
It's a somewhat tentative exploration of a different way of thinking about detective narrative games, and how that worked out for us in Overboard!
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10 years and still here!
10 years. 16 releases. 2.5 million words. 5 BAFTA nominations. 2 IGF Awards. 2 scripting languages. 4 babies.
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80 Days is having some server issues. To the people emailing to say “I really hope you can fix it”, we’re working on it! To the douche who said “For this much money I expect better service”, I’m going to hack the update so you miss every damn train connection by 1 minute
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I’ve just started my first paid writing job. Like, I’ve written stuff before, I guess. But no one’s actually paid me to do it before. I think? It feels like... well, like a big suit on a five year old, but so much fun.
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It’s the strangest thing but since the day Biden won the US election sales of 80 Days have tripled
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For non-writers to understand why AI writing NPC dialogue for games is bad: take your fave TV show. Now imagine an AI that replaces every cut with real-time footage taking the the character from the end of one shot to the start of the next. And you have to watch it all.
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I think: stay small. Stay flexible. Build community, in creators and audience. Be cheap and exciting. Pivot. Don’t sign anything away. Be kind. The hardest: make spaces, if you can, but don’t feel bad if you can’t do much - the world is out to get you; landlords are everywhere
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Any press people interested in previewing/covering the Heavens Vault novel (are there any? I have no idea): anyway, we’ll launch next week but advance copies can be ordered from now. DM me for a link if that’s a thing.
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This time two days ago I was pretty convinced Overboard was going to sink. So thank-you, seriously, to everyone who gave a monkeys. (Or a dolphin.)
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Slightly terrified by the number of archaeologists who have offered to test. If I disappear mysteriously check nearby longbarrows
*politely*: Would anyone out there perhaps like to help beta-test a sort of archaeological narrative adventure thing?
=> inkle
@inklestudios
.com
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This year has been very bad for indies - investment is receding, the markets are closing up again, several good games have been critically and ignored. People’s money is worth more to them than another entry on a near infinite library screen
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if everyone in the industry who played a freebie of this could now kindly retweet this, i can go to sleep
A HIGHLAND SONG IS OUT NOW!
⭐️️ 10/10 - Sixth Axis
⭐️️ 9 - EDGE Magazine
⭐️️4/5 - The Guardian
Start your wild adventure today on:
🎮Switch:
🎮Steam:
RT = ❤️
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Why being indie doesn't mean it's your responsibility to do free R&D for larger studios. Seems apropos today!
Is being innovative always a good thing?
@joningold
of inkle joins us at Develop:Brighton 2021 to discuss how indie studios can minimise risk and use cliché and tropes to their advantage to develop the best games! Find out how:
#DevelopConf
#DevelopIsBack
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Every chapter of the
@heavensvault
book starts with an excerpt from The Chronicles of Mazwai, the ancient Ancient text of note in the Nebula. I’ve been posting these excerpts to our Discord server. One of our community has been re-translating them. Behold, one of Mazwai’s plays:
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Next test run is here! This time it has the real cover, which feels really nice
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I'm a bit addicted to making books right now
The Official User's Guide to Ink: coming soon - early proofs pictured - placeholder cover - sign up to be notified here ()
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(and don't ask how far through development we were when did this unless you like seeing very big percentages)
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The strangest thing about ink is we have no idea who’s using it or what games ship with it, really. It’s very nice when people tell us but I guess the bigger the org, the more cagey / wary of being randomly sued for something they are
After five years of hard thought, iteration and community development, we're proud to announce that ink has now reached version 1.0!
Read all about the new release, and a quick "story so far" on our blog 👉
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