Hey friends! Not a lot of concrete news today, but I’d like to invite you to witness a writing exercise I’ll do for Bibidi Bibidi’s narrative. Maybe something magical will happen along the way?
How Am I Doing?
I’m good! I’ve pretty much recovered from last week’s spiral and have had a flurry of social activities since. I went down to Provins for one of France’s big ren faires. It was fun but a bit busy for my taste! The town is an old medieval town, so the atmosphere is fantastic, but the streets were also clearly not meant for the amount of people that crowd it on the event itself.
There was a pretty cool viking-esque band though! I’d love to revisit the town when there’s no event, just to be able to stroll around with the crowds.
What Am I Doing?
I’ve been chipping away at player feedback from the last Bibidi Bibidi version. It’s slow going. It seems like the initial rush of energy and motivation is slowly started to subside into a more reasonable pace, which is good but also requires some mental adjustment.
For this week’s newsletter however, I’d love to do an exploratory writing excersize for Bibidi’s narrative in realtime. We don’t really have anything story-related on lock yet, but we know that we want something with themes of madness and hubris. We also know that you’re delving deep into a dungeon. So with those themes and that setting in mind, let’s get to writing!
The Message Crystal
“BBD, I have failed to live up to my name.
I always thought I was blessed with foresight as our brethren looked to me for guidance. But it seems that I have led them to nothing but their demise. We were fools to think the Great Yawning was a gift from the gods. True, its twisting hallways house the origin of magic somewhere deep within, but it is clear to me now that we were never meant to find it. No mortal is.
Is it in our nature to probe that which should not be disturbed? Is it inevitable that we delve too deep? Are we consumed by our never-ending hunger for knowledge, forbidden or otherwise? It may very well be that curiosity is the driving factor behind our hubris, but it is hubris nonetheless.
On days when I am lucid, I wonder if we have not caused this rift in the earth ourselves. The leylines are so strong here. Perhaps we built the spires of our home atop this mountain for that very reason, all those centuries ago. I am too tired to remember. Too hungry to try. But when I do, I picture the tall towers endlessly reaching for the sky, once rife with our brothers and the magic they wielded, now empty and abandoned. All left, except for a single, lonesome wizard still clinging to their last vestige of comfort. That wizard is you, BBD. I knew you would stay, long after every single one of us ventured into the mouth of the Yawning.
I must confess, brother, many cycles ago, I thought you a coward. But now, as the final shards of my sanity splinter, I realize how wrong I was. You are wiser than any of us. I pray to the gods that you do not follow me down here, but I know you will. I know you cannot abandon your brothers as we abandoned you. I’m sorry, BBD, and… thank you.”
Why Am I Doing? (this)
That was fun! I had this idea to sprinkle message crystals throughout the dungeon, that you can shatter to play a recorded voice message. Maybe this could be one of them. I’m not sure if that is a good narrative device however, since the game itself is quite brainy, and I don’t think people would want to sit around and wait for such a big info dump.
Jonas and me also didn’t really block anything out for story yet, so we’ll probably come up with a more natural way to do exposition together. But for now, it’s nice to get into the atmosphere and lore of the world this way.