When Night Comes was the first collaborative game project I was privileged enough to partake in. Previous to this experience, I had never written in the horror genre. It was a fantastic learning and experimenting experience that made me grow as a writer and narrative designer.
The project’s designer had reached out to me and presented the idea behind the game. I was, naturally, interested and came on board to write the epilogues and notes within the game. There are three distinct endings total, each of which have their own brief epilogue, along with twenty-four individual note-length passages. I had originally written these as strictly notes, but the designer implemented The Entity’s notes as speech instead. This is displayed in the top of the screen within the screenshot above and to the right.
In my writing and narrative design for the game, I decided to build out The Entity and make it more of a character. To accomplish this, I came up with two different writing styles. One is more calm and contained, more inviting to the player. This is before entering the main level. After the player enters the main level, The Entity’s communication style changes to something more intense and deranged as seen in the above and to the right screenshot, again.
It was important to me that The Entity had some characterization and was something with some depth to it. As someone who’s watched others play many horror games, I enjoy when the antagonist has more to them than the scare factor. I know I accomplished this with the two ways The Entity in When Night Comes communicates.
Below are some bullet points that summarize the above text, with less explanation.
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Wrote notes players find in each level, including notes from both The Entity and previous victims.
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Developed The Entity as a character by the way they write notes to the player.
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Contributed to the 3 endings by writing short epilogue text, establishing what the player protagonist experiences after each one.
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Designed a series of notes to explain why the player needs to collect the statues.
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Ensured some epilogues were vague to allow player imagination to fill in the blanks.
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Wrote some notes to almost reveal what the statues look like, to show The Entity is hiding their appearance.
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Communicated with the lead designer to enrich the player experience and ensure written notes didn’t oppose the intended approach.
