I started working on Fractal Space about 5 years ago, for the mobile version of a game that was still in development but live at the same time. That was the big challenge, as the developer had released an early version and players were absolutely loving it, BUT there wasn’t really a plan for a story. The developer is leaning more towards C# than prose and he could sense that his game needed a story to infuse some life and a stronger identity into his game so he asked me to do it.
My first task was to understand what players already loved about the game and the universe, then look at the gameplay itself, what are we asking of the player? This allowed me to identify a theme and controlling idea that fitted this atmosphere he had already created. From there, I built a story that would accompany the player through Fractal Space maze of puzzles, provide break when the puzzles are hard, use joke to give him clues and add a layer of meaning to what the player was doing.
Today Fractal Space has 700k downloads on Android only and a 4.7 rating and many players love its original story which, while preserving its lighthearted tone, helps players reflect on the power of choice and the importance of balance in life.
As you can see, the writing part is pretty low tech, what I need to have is a file name, a short description of how or when to trigger that dialogue and then the characters who speak. After that, once everyone has reviewed the lines and is happy, I integrated them in Unity. In this case using a custom system created by the devs themselves.
Each chapter of FS corresponds to a major plot point and has an associated theme that strongly binds the art, the level design and the story together. Our goal is to tell a story without drowning the players in words, to do that we use the level design and the activity or actions we request of the player as a story telling tool. For example, there is a chapter about loops and patterns, the idea here is to discuss how we tend to repeat similar patterns in our life and how that blinds us and blocks our progression. In this chapter, the player goes through a series of rooms that have the exact same shape, but to solve them, he needs to break the previous pattern every time. For the last one, he needs to run in a straight line, move forward, which echoes the very first line of the game and our key message “The shortest distance between now and then is a straight line between two points.”
In FS, level design and stories are tightly knit together and it is their combination that allows us to tell a powerful story of escape, choices and growth.
Time to let the players speak:
5 years after the mobile version, I’m working on a new version of the same story for the PC and console edition of the game, with plenty of new rooms and new player tools. To be continued…
You can download the game demo here
Amélie Beaudroit 
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