Since the start of the year, I’ve been working on this little narrative driven game on the side (I still struggle to decide between calling it a point and click adventure game or an interactive novel).

So how did this morbid little story came to be?

The later part of 2016 I participated in a playwriting workshop, and one of the prompts was to take an existing fairytale or mythos and turn it into a play. And way back in 2015, I saw a short film about a protagonist who ran away with her best friend’s ashes as she struggled to deal with the death of her best friend, alongside sentimental promises about growing old together and moving into a nursing home and whatnot.

I remember how it left me wondering what would I do if I had lost my best friend too soon.

With that in mind, it made sense to pick some inspiration from the Epic of Gilgamesh, especially at the second half of the looooong saga where Gilgamesh also goes through grief over the death of Enkidu. And the script naturally came out from there.

So without being too spoilery, that’s the general gist of For Emery. Because I couldn’t find another way to stage the play at that time, I thought, why not turn it into a game? And why not start off with something “easy” like a point-and-click as my first full length game? (Nah, game development is never easy lol)

So what you will see is a modified version of the play to fit the game’s format, and I must still admit that shoving the story down into a game may not be the best way to go about things as it might affect the mechanics and how fun it plays. As it is, I think the difficulty curve is something that isn’t addressed for the sake of letting the story flow.

Progress for the work has been slow and steady. I’m now about slightly more than halfway through designing the levels, and there’s about two more major levels to design and a few more cutscenes to do. I’ll make this available in early access once I’ve put in all the sounds too.

But before I go, here’s something fun to look at. Thanks for sticking around!