Hello. This is Owen Parish.

I have been working on the more abstract elements of the project, composing text, designing mechanics and puzzles.

I’m a little overwhelmed with the anticipation we’ve observed, and I hope that we are able to produce something that will live up to the expectations of our audience.

The original reason for my introduction to the project was my experience with writing interactive fiction, so as well as ARG-style elements, the end-product may also have some of the characteristics observed in adventure games.

Unusual? Yes; I think that what I want most is to create something new. Of course, the hard part is doing that while still making it recognizable to your target audience, and not getting carried away with your own cleverness.

Of course, it could work the other way. Perhaps we’ll draw in some new players to the sub-cultural bubble.

First of all, we apologize for the delay between updates. Things have been hectic, to say the least.

We want to take this opportunity to respond to some questions or curiosities we have seen on public forums, as well as attempt to describe just what Rachel’s Walk is.

*NOTE*: This post borders on the edge of giving out more information than we want to at this time. So if we seem like we’re being vague or not explaining ourselves well, that’s on purpose.

Anyway, here are some of the questions we’ve seen.

“So this is an 80’s video game?”

If you look solely at what we are calling the “Dream Engine”, then yes, it is very similar to an “old school” LucasArts video game. But there is a lot more to Rachel’s Walk than that.

The “Dream Engine” is not the only interface this game will have. If you don’t want to deal with the interactive, game-like interface, there will be plenty of other ways for you to participate.

The reason we wanted such an interface is because it allows for a more robust interaction with an ever changing world, without the need for us to be sitting on the other side of the screen all the time. Using this standalone engine, you can explore and interact with the world at your own pace, in any way you like, without having to wait for feedback from us; the feedback is immediate.

Maybe we haven’t made this exactly clear: the “Dream Engine” is your interface in to an imaginary world, a world that exists only in the mind.  But, for every person that visits the dream world there exists a presence in the real world, and there are those that exist solely in the real world and have a story to tell themselves. In order to get the maximum enjoyment from Rachel’s Walk, you must be ready to explore both sides to fully understand the story being told.

“Screenshots? For an ARG?”

To be honest, this is the reason why we prefer to use the term “interactive fiction” instead of “alternate reality game”… People envision an “alternate reality game” to be a certain way, and we are trying to do something different and contrary to the norm.

What is an “alternate reality” after all? Rachel’s Walk is primarily a dream world where you will be interacting with a variety of characters, from rabbits to faeries, from dragons to centaurs. They are obviously not “real”, but you are visiting their world; to them, everything that occurs within the dream world is within their reality and you are but mere visitors.

Put another way, many people have described an ARG in the past as a “roleplaying game in which you play yourself”. Well, this is just that… except that you’re asleep.

Everyone expects an “alternate reality game” to follow the same style as every other ARG: some social networks, a few websites, a lot of emails bouncing back and forth, the occasional prerequisite cypher… There will still be some of that in Rachel’s Walk (but do keep in mind that we are not fans of “puzzles for the sake of puzzles”), but we are trying to do something different with the “Dream Engine”.

“Will there be other websites other than the main one?”

We do have a propensity to create elaborate websites, some of which are merely cosmetic (and serve only to relay contact information) while others are comparatively complex (with actual development and special functions). And, as has been the case in our past games, you can expect an “in game” form of communication; email at this level is too hard to manage, and we have found that a custom interface to manage all communications makes management and historical tracking of events much easier to manage.

Rachel’s Walk really is no different. Besides the main site that drives the “Dream Engine”, there are several other traditional websites to be explored and interacted with. There will be people in the real world to talk to. There will be multiple forms of communication, and there will be a presence on multiple social networks. The main site reflects your presence in our dream world, but there is most definitely a real world presence. After all, most people don’t sleep all day…

One of the concerns we’re seeing is that some players may not be too keen on the “video game” aspect of this. Quite honestly, although it would be really cool if it would happen, we’re not expecting every player to be traversing the world through the “Dream Engine”. But don’t fear… If the dream world scares you, there will be plenty to do in the real world. You will not be left out, and you will still be able to participate in the story and contribute.

So there you have it. If you’re looking for traditional ARG elements, we’ll have that. If you’re looking to satisfy your craving for 80’s interactive fiction, we’ll have that. We seek to appeal to a large audience, and players will be able to involve themselves in individual parts if they so desire.

As a programmer, one of the things that comes with the job description is knowing that some of the best things you will ever create may never see the light of day.

When the core development of Rachel’s Walk began, the “engine” that you use to navigate through and interact with the world was based on the traditional interactive fiction games of Infocom. Even though it had the added bonus of a graphical representation of the area you were in (we call it a “room”, even though it might not necessarily have four walls), the only means of interaction was a text box where the user would type exactly what he wanted to do.

This might sound like a very simple interface, but behind the scenes that can’t be farther from the truth. Rather than use an existing text parse (such as the “Z” interpreter pioneered by Infocom), I decided to write my own. I wound up with a very intricate text interpreter that was able to chop up a sentence in to parts of speech and determine what exactly you were trying to do. This included a word tree, so that multiple versions of the same command (“get” is the same as “take”, “pick up”, “grab”, “snatch”, “acquire”, “appropriate”, etc…) are treated the same way. This word tree even applied to items: it could be a “lamp”, or a “lantern”, or a “light”, or a “light source”, etc… You get the idea.

I spent weeks writing and perfecting this system, and am to this day still proud of it. It was one of the most remarkable things I’d ever created – from scratch – and everyone we showed it to was impressed.

But then we realized something… Who’s actually going to USE it?

I’m from a gaming generation that’s outdated by twenty years. Whereas a game like this might seem natural to me, the modern day “gamer” – who might not have been born when Infocom was around – wouldn’t know what to do with it. Think about this: consider every game that came out in the last ten or fifteen years… In how many of those games is the principle means of interaction typing text? I honestly couldn’t think of a single one in the last decade.

So that beautiful engine of mine was shelved.

In keeping with the traditions on which this game is based, we decided to use another “old school” game engine as a point of reference: LucasArts‘ SCUMM engine, an engine that drove some of the best games in the genre: the original Monkey Island trilogy, two Indiana Jones games, Maniac Mansion, Sam & Max Hit the Road and many more.

Comparatively speaking, designing this engine was absurdly easy. We now had only nine distinct on screen commands (give, open, close, pick up, talk to, look at, use, push, pull), mostly the same commands that are found in the LucasArts games mentioned above, and in thinking about it they had the right idea: you really don’t need more than that for a game of this nature.

Furthermore, unlike the SCUMM engine, you don’t actually see yourself in the world: it’s a first person view. There’s no way to actually move to another location in the same fashion as the original SCUMM engine (click and the character moves there). Therefore we had to use a compass rose as a means of moving from location to location.

Suddenly the learning curve for the interface is much more acceptable: click on a verb, click on an object (be it in the inventory or in the on screen view of the area) and done. We don’t have to worry about how many ways one can say “lamp” or “book”. We don’t have to worry if you wanted to “look AT” something or “look UNDER” it. The engine went from several thousand lines of code to a few hundred.

Unfortunately, we can no longer respond to someone typing “xyzzy”… You can’t win them all, I guess.