Bringing the genre into a new age
Tin Man Games isn’t the only developer leading this revolution. A Sharp, the maker of 1999 “storytelling-strategy game” King of Dragon Pass, refined the title for iOS in 2011 and has since achieved more than 30,000 downloads. It not only added new interactive scenes and Game Center achievements, for example, but also simplified gameplay and squashed bugs. The user experience is far better, from a manual that players can access anytime to “livestock” instead of sheep and pigs.
But there’s still a lot to see, just like in visual novels and gamebook adventures. “No scene will randomly repeat for at least five game years,” wrote designer David Dunham.
That’s a lot of text, but King of Dragon Pass is, foremost, a game. That can work in a developer’s favor.
“The fact that you’re reading is a huge challenge because obviously, that’s a barrier for a lot of people,” said Rennison. “But it also can work both ways in that because it’s a game … that can break down the reading barrier for some people.”
It’s important to put new pressures on the genre to further overcome this obstacle. “What worked quite well in paperback form in 1986 doesn’t necessarily work so well in 2013, and it’s kind of knowing what to keep in and what to take out and what to evolve or move forward,” said Rennison. “And there are various different companies that are making gamebooks as apps and games at the moment, and I think we’re all pushing in slightly different directions to try out new things and see what we can do with the genre.”
That’s perhaps easier to do with Tin Man’s games, unfortunately, than with visual novels, whose Japanese developers might not want to change their style to appeal to Western audiences.
In an effort to reach more players, Rennison’s studio even experimented with business models by offering a science-fiction gamebook adventure with a few chapters available for free and the rest as a paid download. But that didn’t result in the traction they would have liked. “I think the problem is that we’re such a niche area that in order for freemium with in-app purchases to work, you need a large install base,” he said.
Reinventing the basics
Part of growing that base and making these games better is figuring out what people found frustrating about classic gamebooks. “Obviously, keeping record of all your stats and all your items and everything as you go about the story is quite time-consuming,” said Rennison. Tin Man’s games monitor everything for you.
“We need to put things in there that appeal to gamers,” he said — like music and cinematic openings, which improve the presentation. “And obviously, the dice is a big issue because you roll dice in gamebooks, and we needed a way of getting around that, so we have fully 3D physics dice. You actually shake your iPad or your iPhone or your Android phone or tablet, and the dice bounce around the screen.”
He also proposed the idea of removing the dice entirely and adding in something completely different. It’s all part of trying out new mechanics and seeing what players respond to.
In Tin Man’s upcoming Forest of Doom, based on the classic Fighting Fantasy gamebook, the studio added a map that shows monsters and previously visited locations. “A lot of the time, when we were kids, we’d map it out on a piece of graph paper,” said Rennison. “But it feels like it needs the app to actually do that mapping for you.”
Artwork and voice actors can make these games stand out more, too. Bringing in Wheaton as a narrator (a “happy accident”), for example, helped raise awareness for Trial of the Clone. “Any little thing like that that you add in, in marketing terms, really can bring something alive a bit more” and increase visibility, said Rennison.
He admitted that some of Tin Man’s early gamebook adventures were too hard; introducing difficulty settings and a bookmarking system has made a difference. These features, including what’s essentially a casual reading mode, make the apps accessible to more people. In addition, achievements break up the story length and help players achieve a sense of completion by encouraging them to explore a game more thoroughly.
After all, these games are deep and replayable, a desirable feature of many console titles.
“It’s difficult to try to get that spread of variety and length but also to make that fun,” said Rennison. “People have got to be compelled to want to keep going through it.”
Finding fresh ways to redefine an experience can bring a whole new community to a genre. It could be the answer to saving this one. No one said these games had to be niche forever.