Post-mortem

For my narrative game I wanted to make a visual novel game that was inspired by the Russian folklore character “Baba Yaga. The game was made via Unity (with fungus)

From my research, the depiction of baba yaga seemed to vary. The most popular depiction of her was her being this evil witch who likes eats children. This depiction makes her out to seem like an antagonistic character. However, there is another depiction where instead of being antagonistic, she may help the protagonist, perhaps with her wisdom.

The ambiguous nature of the baba yaga mainly takes inspiration from Andreas Johns’ idea of who the baba yaga who described her as being “enigmatic” and a “many-faceted figure” this is why I wanted different townspeople to give the player an idea of who the baba yaga is. Because there are so many differing ideas of who she is it was quite challenging for me to create my own depiction of her or to create a story around her

I thought that it might be interesting to create a narrative where her morale affiliation was quite ambiguous to the player, forcing the player to discover some sort of truth on who she is

The concept of the game was to have many branching paths with Npcs having to sway the player, telling him their own experience or belief of the baba Yaga and they would give you new information that you could use.

At first my idea was to have the protagonist find a letter of his grandma who had died or had disappeared (I was undecided back then), and in the letter the player would learn about the baba yaga early on from the letter, causing him to seek out this creature.

He would then visit a small town

Later on I changed the letter as I felt that it would take away both interest and tension (because there are horror elements) from the player, knowing already about the “maguffin” of the story.

Soon while writing the script for the game, I felt that the concept for the story wasn’t working as it felt weak and lacked direction so I ended up having to revise it.

In the revised story, rather than focusing on a adopted relative that has meet with baba yaga in the past and wants to share her secret with her son, the story was changed to the story of a father whose son has gone missing, and soon discovers that he might have been taken by the baba yaga, causing him to head to the forest where she lives in order to rescue his son.

The structure of the story would later change, taking a more non-linier approach.

The design of the story is that as you progress, you get fragments of the story available to you.

In terms of the ambiguous nature of the baba yaga, people would still have different opinions on her

I didn’t want this to follow the typical “hero’s journey archtype.

When creating the ending I was having a hard time deciding what it should be. I felt like the player should gain something. When I revised the script that gain ended up being the protagonist’s son

The game’s design contains elements of magic realism as well as scenes that the player could question as to whether they are real or not.

There are also slight elements of psychological horror and fragmented storytelling implemented as well. Games such as “Hellblade” and “what remains of Eidith Finch” as well as films like “memento” where inspirations for my game.

Regarding the story, The game can be looked at in two different ways. Either it’s about a father rescuing the protagonist’s son from the evil baba yaga or about about the protagonist dealing with grief in his own way. Because of that forest and baba yaga herself becomes more metaphorical and psychological for the protagonist, as this was dealing with the loss of a loved one, this was quite a hard topic for me to work with as well. In order to not cause offence I tried to stay away from clichés such as making him an alcoholic in order to cope with the pain. I thought that it might be better to look into insomnia for a topic like this.

The brother was added as I felt that he shouldn’t be alone while in grief. The brother cares for the protagonist and wants to help him with his pain so it wouldn’t make sense to abandon him

However toward the end when he is all alone he is facing his fear himself.

I think it was best to end with an ambiguous ending as to allow the player to figure out for themselves whether his son was brought back, whether this was all a dream, or whether this was symbolic, representing the protagonist finally overcoming his grief and moving forward.

The setting of the game is in a fictional place, going for a modern day approach but with a more timeless design. That being said, because of the folklore the game does take place in a fictional Russia with the town section loosely inspired by a part of Vologda oblast in Russia.

Designing the baba yaga was quite interesting, I attempted to combine both the evil trickster and woman of life/harvest into the design while still attempting to make her appearance creepy. Both Her design had to feel very old and worn out which can also be seen from the design of the house

What went wrong-

In terms of What went wrong the final product feels a little less “free” then I wished it to be.

I was considering having more branching paths but I was having trouble implementing them as well as creating satisfying paths. In the end, I was wasting too much time trying to write up alternatives so they were abandoned. There is also a lack of music and sound effect that would be quite useful to the psychological horror feel

I do feel like I overscoped for this game project as well

I think the problem was I was focusing too much on the ambiguity of the baba yaga that it caused confusion and added to the overscoping of the project, so perhaps the baba yaga was abit too much of a topic for me to handle, whic

What went right-

I do feel as though my interpretation of her, as well as the usage of what she represents could be considered an interesting representation of the folklore and the character, so I do believe that I have accomplished my job to some degree. I also feel like my artwork does help create the narrative of the game and bring my idea to life.