Story-telling in a 2D flash platformer

2D platformers are my absolute favorite type of game, and they are the only kind I really want to make until my dumb programming skills get better. Combine this with the fact that my main draw towards gaming and any other form of media is the story and characters and you get a pretty difficult dilemma. It is incredibly difficult to create a game, regardless of genre, that incorporates dynamic and interesting characters, while still being fun to play. There are a few examples, such as Portal 1/2, and... other Valve games... and that's it? I can't think of any at the moment, but I'm sure there are some other ones. The point is that it is nigh-impossible to do right, and even more nigh-impossible-er in a 2D Flash platformer.

Flash has some restrictions, like file sizes, so a simple sound/voice based story-telling method would be out of the question. The other options that I can think of would be text, or visual story-telling based on the environment.   Many 3D games can make use of the latter using design methods and carefully scripted moments to ensure the player looks and hears specific details when the designer wants them to. This is more difficult in a 2D game as the player can usually see everything at once, and in only one perspective. What I plan on doing in my horror game is restricting the player's view on things, and then revealing bits of the level on places I know where they'll look. This would be difficult, but possible with enough scripted events and tricks. In the other game I'm working on, the player will have a full view on the screen/level, which makes restricting views sort of hard. There could still be scripted moments, which would make the player look at whatever I want them to, but it wouldn't be as surprising or special if the player knew something was coming. Still, showing characters reacting to things around them would be a better alternative to having the player read through boxes of text, and trying to derive an ounce of personality from it. It is better to show, not tell in this case. Showing a robot decapitating innocent people is infinitely better than having it say, "I like to decapitate innocent people all the times."

I wrote this because I was unsure of how to implement the story in my next games. The walrus game features its story though tiny cut-scenes. Although I dislike the idea of cut-scenes, the game itself barely has a story, and little silly animations can fit a Flash game quite well. The next two games I'm planning in my head are kind of story heavy however, which is why I thought to write about my options in this blog. Like most of these "blog-storming©" sessions, I've come to the conclusion that a mixture of both would be good. Scripted moments of visual action to demonstrate a character's personality, and then some optional text to explain the story and provide a way for the NPC's to communicate with the player. This seems like the best route given my choices, even though I don't care for reading in a game. Ideally all story should be delivered through gameplay, making use of the medium to its fullest, but with the limitations of Flash and the platformer genre, it is very difficult to do in a coherent way.

If any of the none of you reading this have thought of an alternative method to story-telling in games, please feel free to bring it up. There are only so many ways a person can absorb a story, and I think I've covered all of them. Tomorrow I'll write about how I might physically implement the text and story elements into my game, or maybe not, blog writing isn't that fun to do.