Heya friends! Oh my, such a dramatic title today! Don’t worry there’s good news hiding behind the clickbait. I’ve spent a lot of time on Rumorweaver‘s vertical slice and some opportunities came up, so today we’ll be talking about what’s next.

How Am I Doing?

I’m doing pretty good. I think I worked a bit too much these past two weeks, and I’m noticing some fatigue here and there. The next few days I will spend resting and processing my thoughts.

Last week I had a call with a creative peer of mine about a potential partnership, and it’s pretty likely we’ll start working on a new project together somewhere in March. We don’t have a concrete plan yet, since we’re both wrapping up our own stuff at the moment, but I’m really excited about the prospect of collaborating already.

Now, that does lead me to a question. What do I do with Rumorweaver? Committing to a collaboration closes some doors for me. During that time, I won’t be able to put my back into pitching it around and trying to secure funding or business partners. No funding means no team. No team means no Rumorweaver.

But then, if I think about spending months to make deals and still end up potentially falling short of the budget it requires to make an open-world sandbox narrative game… It doesn’t spark joy. To be completely honest, the idea of spending at least 2 years (but probably way longer) on writing the damn thing already makes me apprehensive more than ecstatic. Initially, I set up New to Narrative to make short, experimental narrative games by myself. How did I get from there to wanting to make a huge, open-world sandbox game?

To give it the axe also seems drastic. I put a lot of time and effort into this game, and the vertical slice is just shy of being complete. If I drop it now, I won’t have anything to show for it at all! What then?

What Am I Doing?

The current version of Rumorweaver is not fun yet, but it has some strong bones to it. I like the characters, the writing style is functional and it has a sense of place to it. It’s super short if you’re a fast reader, but there’s some replayability to it if you’d like to experience the various different approaches.

It’s also… Not the original vision of the game. Here’s a quote from the pitch I made for the newsletter where I announced the project, all the way back in July 2024:

Information is key: ask around town for gossip, verify unsubstantiated claims and use that knowledge to persuade or coerce people.

Its sandbox world has many reactive characters and social structures that fit the historical Korean period drama genre.

A lot of the initial design was centered around systemic narrative: a way for me to create dynamic stories over a giant cast of characters of different backgrounds. For the vertical slice, I favored a more hand-tailored narrative approach, so that it feels like a unique and streamlined experience. The cast is tiny, and I’d be hard-pressed to call the world “sandbox” at all, since it’s very limited in scope and interactiveness.

What’s more, the vertical slice does not really deal with “rumors” that you have to verify. You’re gathering suggestions and clues from people, but most of the claims made are not open for interpretation and true by default.

Rise from the Ashes

So what we have is not Rumorweaver as originally envisioned. In fact, that game will probably never come to fruition. I’m simply not ready for an ambitious project of that scope yet. Instead, I plan on turning the vertical slice into a standalone game!

With the right direction and proper planning, I believe I can polish up the vertical slice into a game that can stand on its own. It will be a short, experimental narrative game akin to the likes of Overboard! by inkle. It won’t be called Rumorweaver, obviously, since there are no more rumors to weave.

I will also have to reframe the story quite a bit, otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense. For once, I’m happy I didn’t put too much effort into implementing the intro and endings yet. I don’t exactly how much work it will take to create a worthy product yet, but I’m aiming to launch in 2 months tops. More on that next week!

Why Am I Doing? (this)

The idea of finishing it up and getting it out there is scary but exhilarating. Over the course of my life, I’ve learned that it’s important to follow your gut feeling when it comes to happiness. If creative collaboration and the idea of wrapping up my project fast fills me with giddiness and anticipation, why would I ever trade that for some ambitious thing I probably won’t enjoy half of the time anyway?

Follow your heart but also keep in mind the goals you set out to achieve!