Away Mission

Design Notes

Premise:

You’re the Captain! What will you choose?

AWAY MISSION is a bite-sized adventure. In each volume, you and your crew will encounter a quick, new scenario. Navigate through familiar tropes with some not-so-familiar twists. You’re in charge of the away mission and the story that unfolds…

Targeted Scope:
  • 5–10 minute playable story exploring a typical away mission scenario (of which there are many!)  
  • Establish a modest cast of characters, both familiar and new
  • Provide a few, subtle personality choices (how the captain relates to the crew)
  • Provide 2 alternate paths, each of which gives fragments of the story through environmental clues
  • Lead up to a single, core moral choice that hints at possible repercussions in the future
  • Have 1 small, early choice (variable) impact the ending in a way that plays with a common trope, and potentially affects the player’s final decision
  • Focus on the text with a handful of effects, including console/scan dialog entries and starfield intro/outro
  • Learn from creating the game and build from the potential foundation
Scenario Trope:
  • Derelict Ship. This type of encounter is the perfect backdraft for the stated scope. The situation is familiar, intriguing, and can easily be joined in media res.
Additional Themes:
  • Redshirts – an inside joke with life-or-death consequence
  • Energy Aliens – inscrutable and inherently dangerous
  • First Contact – fear of the unknown. Also, how will you be perceived now that you’ve been found out (and momma might come calling!). Tip of the iceberg…
  • Moral/Ethical Directives – what is your duty to other lifeforms, your crew, etc.? And what are the possible implications…
  • “A Cornered Rat Will Bite the Cat”
  • “Beware a Cornered Tiger”
Initial Cast of Characters:
  • The Captain – You!
  • Signaller Jones – Communications officer
  • Officer Salinas – Contradictory. Judging. Humor or placate them? Stays on ship.
  • Harper – Captain’s right-hand.
  • Ghazi – More brusk. Engineer?
  • Blake – Inexperienced recruit. Security.
Rough Map of the Ship:

I split the medium-sized cargo ship into 2 corridors, basically a left and right path. As the Captain of the away mission of 4, you can split up and explore either side. You have some basic info from your crew and previous console dialogs for what to expect in terms of room types along the way. When you go down either path, you can choose to get a radio interpretation from the other side from the other half of the crew. Both paths converge to the cargo bay in the back, at which the alien encounter takes place.

Resulting Twine Map:
Retrospective/Lessons Learned:

Use this as a launching point into more. The scope items were modest, resulting in a very small, efficient game. It can be replayed to go through the environmental story items that were missed, to react slightly differently to the crew, to save/kill Blake, and to make a different choice at the end. The characters and universe can be established further, as there are countless away mission types to explore.

Questions:
  • Should each mission be similarly small in scope, with the intent to offer several bite-sized campaigns that center around a core choice?
  • Or should the away missions start expanding in scope, offering a larger number of branches & complexity?
  • Should the away missions “remember” choices from before? For instance, players answer a couple of questions up front?
  • Should a health bar or inventory system be used to track the crew members on an away mission? Your choices could put them in increasing danger, which would be reflected in those stats.
Potential Future Tasks/Enhancements:
  • Select a second away mission. Some scenario choices include:
    • Alien Diplomats – A world split by 2 factions. Who’s telling the truth? First impressions, judging a book by its cover, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, beware the siren song…
    • Unwinnable Situation – What do you do when confronted with a no-win scenario? (Kobayashi Maru)
  • Add background color/images to the story to improve the visual component
  • Add tasteful music/sound effects, where applicable
  • Start a numbering/naming convention