Introduction

Hello! I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. If you want to catch up on the devlog series, you can do so here. I am making CLIPS, a point-and-click escape room horror game! Today, we are giong to be talking about lore, and how you can tell a secret story through your own game. Of course, I can't spoil the lore in CLIPS, so I will just be talking about techniques used for making the lore findable, but not easy.

Hiding Places

To start, where should you hide the storyline of your game? Well, anywhere! Anywhere but in plain sight. The main mechanic of CLIPS is having a file navigation system for secrets and minigames. This is where the lore will mainly be hidden. 

For example, in the Demo that I am currently designing, there are two CLIPS minigames. One is in the Demo level, and another is in the tutorial marked as a "Bonus Tape". That bonus tape contains a lot of lore, and little minigame elemnts. The other CLIPS minigame is purely for entertainment.

Creating A Story

Now that you know where to hide your lore, what should you hide? What story should your game tell? Well, I wil try to talk about this without many spoilers for the story of CLIPS. You must make sure that the story is something the audience wants to hear. It must by engagnig, firstly. You can feel free to give players a little bit of information in the very beggining, but not too much.

Make sure to make the story fitting with whatever genre of game you are creating. If it is an action game, there should be some fighting in the story. If it is a horror game, make sure the story has some horror elements. Lastly, write the story you want to tell. Video games are, after all, only a medium for storytelling and entertainment. There is not reason why not to get through a message or tehme through a game any less than you would in a book.

Thanks for reading!

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