Rainman

In my design for Rainman, I placed a lot of importance on making the player's decisions feel impactful in the world of the narrative. I wanted there to be a lot of variability in the passages based on player choices so that players could have more unique experiences and so that the game could have more replay value. To achieve this, I made dialogue passages and options available to the player dependent on earlier player choices, as well as through a time variable I created that increased with certain actions. Creating and changing variables was fairly simple, and making links from one passage to another was only slightly more complex. Setting up multiple choices that checked for different variables was challenging, but formatting ended up being the most difficult and finnicky task in the whole project. 

By showing an assigned title and letter at the bottom of every ending's passage, I hoped to further reinforce to the player that there was more to experience if they start over and choose a different path. There is only one ending that could be widely considered the 'good ending' (Dawnbringer) as all other endings involve the death of innocent villagers or the player character themselves. My reasoning behind this was that I don't really like the binary outcome of a good or a bad ending. I generally find morally grey endings to be more interesting, though I think extremes on either side are fine as long as they're presented within a spectrum of several other endings rather than just two.

Overall, I was very happy with how the game turned out as I was able to accomplish everything I had initially intended to. If I were to ever return to the game again for further development, I think it would most greatly benefit from ambient audio and sound effects for some key moments. This would add to the atmosphere of the game and make certain moments feel more impactful.