This is a short interactive film. This one has a specific design, for a specific purpose.
It was an excercise in my ability to control scope creep. It was partially successful at that, but I'm actually not crazy about how this video turned out.
If you're trying to watch it right now while reading this, first things first, I don't think it works in the embed form, so you'd probably have to watch it on youtube. At the end of each video, there is a choice of two options, which lead down various forks of the river. I'm not sure they show up in the embed version.
Here are the design constraints and goals I used for this one.
1. It was supposed to take a week. 70 hours max work time.
I think I got pretty close to sticking to that. Maybe it ran over into 80 hours. If anyone remembers this far back, the earliest stated goal of the Save Point project was to focus on the strategy of prioritizing speed of narrative construction. In example, you might wonder why this film doesn't look as good as my contest entry "The Search" from almost 2 years ago. Notice however that this film is 17 animated videos, created in the same time it took to make that one.
2. It was designed to tell the simplest, most chill story I could come up with. Difficulty level 1/10. I stuck to that, though I didn't want to. All part of the master plan.
It's as intended, a peaceful boat ride through the jungle, interesting sights and sounds, but ultimately low key, with no tension. It's basically the opposite of Save Point in that respect, but I had a different goal here.
3. I wanted people to be able to finish the entire story in about 5-6 minutes.
Mission accomplished.
4. Keep quality high, don't embellish, no repeats.
Partial failure. lots of errors, a few repeated scenes, it's fairly weak. Putting a hard limit on hours spent meant leaving in mistakes, and just gaining the XP from those.
5. Finish it, and move on quickly.
I screwed this up. and this was important. To be fair, I got sick a good bit this month from having to take too much migraine medication. Energy was low, I made some design errors early one, etc. But that's the experience I intended to get. Finish the project and release it, then look back in the clear light of hindsight and analyze all the places where I diverged from the plan, and note why. Bottom line, I'll need to be very disciplined at this type of process to confidently execute on the much higher level the Save Point launch will require.
6. Get my own gut reaction to how I felt about the quality I could achieve at this speed. The pipeline has options now. I can do more action or interaction scenes slower, and pad out time with simpler content, which is what this is.
I don't love it. It's ok. Honestly, I can't imagine why someone would watch this. Not really a problem though, this was an excercise in design focus, and that aspect did work out ok.
At the end of "River" I did accomplish some of what I set out to do. I've found that mental obstacles become less daunting, less taxing, and easier, the more you repeat them. Scope creep is one such obstacle, and I did manage to stick to the original design, even if I don't find the outcome super riveting. That's an important skill, that will be even more important as I tackle the much larger goal of SP chapter 1.
In any case, the reason this whole page of text is here is to put out the idea of gaining experience in the process of finishing something on a deadline amidst conflicting goals, something I learned to value while developing content in the corporate world.
Anyway, I make it sound terrible, but it's actually kind of enjoyable. You can play through it a few times and see different things each time, and it doesn't overstay it's welcome too long.
I'd welcome any comments about aspects such as sound mix, visual interest, section length, etc. Feedback would be helpful. I'm not looking for much feedback on story or choices here, since these parts were severely cramped in this design, and I already know how to improve them once I have more time and space to work.
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