Designing a Webisodic Adventure (playable webcomic).

Retro Wolf · Thu 17/03/2016 09:30:23

I've long fantasised about making a webisodic adventure game, kind of like a playable webcomic. It would be playable in the internet browser.
The average webcomic tends to be released weekly, ranging from a few panels to a page. They're short and funny.

To avoid embarrassment:
I'd plan several episodes to be part of a season, all the games in the season would be more or less finished before episodes started to be released.
Each season could be a self contained story so I'm not making a long term commitment.

If there was such a thing as a playable webcomic:
How long would you expect gameplay to last?
How often should a webisode be released?
How many puzzles in one game?
How many episodes in a season?

Mandle · Thu 17/03/2016 12:30:40

Quote from: Retro Wolf on Thu 17/03/2016 09:30:23
If there was such a thing as a playable webcomic:
A: How long would you expect gameplay to last?
B: How often should a webisode be released?
C: How many puzzles in one game?
D: How many episodes in a season?

This sounds like an amazing idea!!! I've labelled the questions A-D for convienience of both my own answers and maybe others'...

A: 10-20 mins:
B: Once a week on a regularly scheduled day, like every Sunday.
C: 2-3.
D: 8 or 12 depending on the depth of story. (So: 2 months or 3 months)

(Possibly double everything A-C for the Finale...So: two episodes in one sitting basically)

Danvzare · Thu 17/03/2016 12:34:31

I've had similar thoughts before, and here's what the conclusions I more or less came to.

I would expect one to be anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour in length.
I would expect one to be released either every fortnight or every month, with about half a year to a full year between seasons.
I would expect there to be 1 to 3 puzzles in one game.
And I would expect there to be anywhere from 5 to 10 episodes.

I even once wrote down a guide for how the puzzles should be structured.
Believe it or not, I thought all of this stuff out back during 2009, when I was marathoning through all of the games Telltale games had released up to that point. I noticed a pattern in the they were structured, and began thinking about how that could be used to create my own episodic adventure games.
I never did it though, because I couldn't draw back then.

Retro Wolf · Thu 17/03/2016 20:55:00

There's also the potential for players to influence the story, similar to WHAM's forum games. Players could vote on major plot decisions, shall the Fellowship brave the Misty Mountains? Or pass through the Mines of Moria?

Mandle · Thu 17/03/2016 22:22:08

Quote from: Retro Wolf on Thu 17/03/2016 20:55:00
There's also the potential for players to influence the story, similar to WHAM's forum games. Players could vote on major plot decisions, shall the Fellowship brave the Misty Mountains? Or pass through the Mines of Moria?

Erm....but:

Quote from: Retro Wolf
To avoid embarrassment:
I'd plan several episodes to be part of a season, all the games in the season would be more or less finished before episodes started to be released.

That's a lot of extra games you'd be pre-making for all the potential branches. It could be done as a between-season event of a continuing story but, even then, I'd say you would want to be already working on the next season's games while the current season was "airing" like they do with TV series...

Retro Wolf · Fri 18/03/2016 09:07:41

I'm just throwing ideas out there, I would never deliberately create too much work for myself.

Stupot · Sat 19/03/2016 03:51:51

a) I think an episode should be something that can be completed on a lunch break, so 20mins (ish)
b) Weekly or maybe fortnightly. Monthly is too long.
c) One major puzzle is enough, but with 3-5 sub-puzzles required to be able to solve the main one.
d) Six episodes is quite a popular format these days. I'm writing something in 6 "episodes" at the moment (not a game though).

I guess there aren't any rules to this kind of thing. You just have to make sure there is some consistency between the episodes and be careful not to give yourself too much work too early on.

Danvzare · Sat 19/03/2016 09:51:14

It seems as though everyone has very similar ideas about how a Webisodic Adventure game should be like. So my best advice would be to try and average out our responses.

Retro Wolf · Wed 23/03/2016 19:04:56

Time to complete can be a hard one to figure out, one puzzle might take a person 2 minutes, another guy might spend 15 scratching their head.

Thanks for the input guys, I've started writing an outline for some episodes set in the RotN universe.
I might release an episode 0, a kind of glorified tech demo.