Ghost in a Flower

Designers’ Statement

Hope for Life

My game, “Ghost in a Flower” is fictional, mystery, and interactive story game. The player is the protagonist in the story, and choose what action she will take. You always have two or three choices. Also, you need to solve the mystery in a picture to reach the ‘ideal’ goal. There are two kinds of endings, but you will have multiple pathways through the game. There are hints in a story and pictures, so players need to carefully look and think about the trick. The main theme and message from the creator are “hope: don’t forget your creative and playful minds in everyday life”. If players find the correct answer, they will find the word (the theme of this game) at the end.

The story is inspired by the song “Ghost in a Flower” by Yorushika, and characters are inspired by the comic book “Toilet-bound Hanako-kun”. I embedded some elements of song and characters in the story; for example, “smell of summer”, “word is not everything”, or names Mei and Misaki. Since the song visualizes the nostalgic, good-old Japanese summer, I tried to keep its image. Although the character set and elements are from other works, the entire story itself is originally made by the game creator.

In terms of Mechanics, I used Twine 2 with SugarCube for the first time. Originally, I wanted to put music in the game, yet the coding didn’t work well. However, I could put a YouTube link at the end of the game. I would like to do more research and improve this game in the future. Moreover, I utilized pictures effectively at this time. Players will see pictures change by time goes, which looks like the protagonist draws it as the story goes on. Also, I tried different codlings from last time with Harlow. Changing paragraph (>>), drawing a line (<hr>), or making connections (with [[ ]]) was a new challenge in this game. In terms of technical coding work, I worked in JavaScript to disable to back button (wrote “Config.history”), and it worked perfectly.

I wish, after playing this game, the players will bring back the feeling of hope that they can do anything with their creative and playful minds, just like Mei did in a game. Sometimes our reality is too stuffy and gloomy to live, as COVID-19 made people stuck in a house, yet I hope people don’t forget their enjoyment of life through this game. May this game give people hope to live in this world better!