About a year and a half ago, I set out to create my "supernatural journalistic game" without a very definite concept in mind, but with the main premise that it will be based upon a procedural story generator, something I had been toying with for quite a long time, but never gotten down to actually developing.
The original idea was to create an actual investigation game that, in essence, plays like a multichoice adventure, however offering the player potentially endless stories and possibilities in place of the usual forescripted affair. I have already tried out that approach to some degree with The Casebook of Terry Winter, but the case generator for it was a very early prototype, and it shows it limits quite obviously.
What eventually came to be is very different from my original premise in some ways, even though I think it keeps a large bit of its original spirit. Having six characters in the game, with many stories to investigate, as it would be expected for a newspaper of DC's category, meant that the player won't have the time nor focus to follow or investigate those stories in the detail. I had to shift the direction away from the still very prototypish generator to the gameplay itself, because it is gameplay where the magic of a game hides.
Unable to create a kind of gameplay that would actively revolve around the stories itself, at that point, I thus decided to focus on all other aspects that I wanted to see in my game. For me, the reporters of DC were never just that, they were also this kind of noir-ish 'superheroes' fighting against supernatural horror, and the newspaper is merely a cover up story. So instead of making an investigative game, I made a sort of virtual board game, an RPG where the player must deal with encounters somewhat typical for an RPG, but with a tiny difference: instead of fighting nameless zombies, ghosts, monsters, I wanted each opponent in the game to have a story, to be connected to the game the player is playing. Even if that story, at this point, is not far as complex or dramatic as Mr Lovecraft himself could have done, it is a start, and I think not a bad start for something that is essentially still just an automaton.
There appears to be very little research done in the field of procedural storytelling. The topic actually borders that of general purpose ai, natural language processing, passing the turing test and similar problems. It is a problem of rather vast proportions, and not likely to be entirely solved any time soon. My second prototype, one I developed for Daily Chthonicle, is better than the first one, but more importantly, it was useful for me as a learning tool. The next one will be written from the scratch, but I am many times better prepared for it this time!
So, whatever my next game will be, it will be built on experiences and knowledge I accumulated while developing DC. It will most likely include a new, better story generator and a much better language processor, less prone to grammatical errors and quirks. If that game happens to be "Daily Chthonicle 2", it will probably be a very different game, with focus on a single main story, one that is told in more detail and allows the player both better immersion and a chance for actual investigation.
Even with that all in mind, however, I still think Daily Chthonicle stands on its own as a game. It is small and casual, not groundbreaking, but still fun to play and even offers some actual challenge on higher levels. Because with experimental games, this is exactly the hardest thing to achieve - there can be as many new ideas, technologies and concepts built into a game, it won't help the game much if it isn't fun to play. This is always the main challenge for any new and never before tested approach.
Final Thanks
To all the people that helped bringing this game to life:
To my SO Mateja, my parents, relatives and closest friends for supporting me all the time.
To Rotondo, for helping me with game's design, development, testing & being here in general.
To Marko Petrusic for making the wonderful soundtrack.
To Pinkerator for helping me publish the game and coping with marketing issues.
To Martin for beautiful artwork.
To Cheapest Gamer, BillyVG, The Fragnostic, YKYMrFalcon, Libby, Purity Sin, Bostasan, Gordinho Sagaz and many other letsplayers for making the great videos of Daily Chthonicle.
To all the internet reviewers for the very friendly reception of the game and for helping me spread the word about it.
And last but not least, to all the players helping with their feedback, suggestions and bug reports during the entire development of the game, with special thanks to all the friendly Steam Early Access players for the final pieces of this raft to keep it afloat!
Matija Kostevc aka Charon@sinistersystems
