MEET A DEV: Story

My name is Dooma Wendschuh and I used to write AAA games. Teams hundreds strong. Huge budgets. Endless days, blurring together: screenwriting software, narrative flow charts. That smell of the studio that I just can’t forget. Even longer days with actors in the voiceover booth. Thousands of lines, pick the best ones. Traveling - on planes… a lot. Microwave Indian food at the studio in Morocco. Vodka at the studio in St. Petersburg. Shows. Autographs. Interviews. Conferences. Sleep? Maybe when I retire.

And then, finally, I did retire. On a remote island where seal hunting is kind of a big thing. They’re cute - like sea-puppies. Bought a restaurant- best seal nachos you’ve ever had. Walked my dog along stunning red cliffs in the snow. It was great.

Then Abbott called. His friend Joe had made a game. On nights and weekends, while working full time as a movie director and shooting commercials for big brands and managing the release of his most recent film, Joe taught himself Unreal – and built an open world sandbox action / survival game about starting and managing a doomsday cult. My kind of guy. It was amazing – but there was still a lot to do to get it over the finish line. And it needed a story. So here we are.

Steam post image Bedford County is full of many mysteries.

This is unlike anything I’ve done before. We’re 10 people on this team (+2 part time). The whole game budget is less than the travel budget for games I’d worked on before. The biggest difference: 20% of our team is dedicated to working on crafting the story.

But this is not an easy story to write:

Firstly - while there are exceptions – I think it’s fair to say sandbox survival games are less known for storytelling. It’s more about the story you create as the player (or if it’s co-op game, the story you create w/friends). And JOIN US has that x1,000... but a traditional narrative is a tall order in this genre.

Steam post image Something very bad happened at the Bedford Zoo. And the animals were not the losers.

Here’s the real challenge: The 1st thing my first screenwriting professor taught me: Every story needs a protagonist - the central character whose journey drives the action. And JOIN US can’t have a protagonist. When your character dies, they’re gone forever. You come back as a different Follower (assuming you have Followers – but a cult of one is more of a study in poor life choices than an actual cult).

Steam post image Things are, uh, heating up during a nighttime raid.

And we stretched this permadeath concept even further: You can switch to a different playable character whenever you like. When you switch, you’re “teleported” to wherever that Follower is located. If your outpost is being raided, open your roster, find a Follower at that outpost and you’re there. Now imagine trying to write a story when the player can check out at any moment and re-appear at the other end of the map.

Steam post image There's a perfectly logical explanation for this. The apocalypse is not coming. Probably. Most likely not.

Oh, and in JOIN US, you have essentially unlimited freedom to choose your cult’s beliefs using “teachings” - & each choice has implications for your gameplay experience. Imagine trying to write a story where you don’t know whether the cult embraces hedonism, or if they’re preppers, or worship aliens, or practice cannibalism. And the story has to make sense no matter what the player chooses.

Can you see why these challenges got me to put down the seal nachos and un-retire? I won’t tell you how well - or poorly - I think we addressed them. That’s for you to decide!

I just hope you have as much fun playing this game as we had writing it.