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Welcome friend, my name is J.N Pickee (haha, well that’s my pen name)
In late 2009, I had a fantasy of a book behaving like a video game, thus I was tempted to see if it can work, this project was created, for 3 years I tried to get it off, but there was always a problem, I was never happy with the result, it changed drastically.
Until late 2011 when I tried to get it published. I found out it would cost too much at this moment in time. So changed it for the final time for online use, and in April 2012 I created this website and launched my first gamebook project (then called a “Literature Game”) called “Exuberant Extraordinaries” to share and expose my project to everyone in order to see how far this experiment goes.
Next in late 2012, I took my card game project I made during my teen years combined it with some concepts from the Exuberant Extraordinaries Project, and thus Eíntastikólogy is born, Eíntastikólogy behaves like a trading card game but that game is condensed into a adventure, so you can obtain new pieces within that adventure instead of obtaining them from booster packs like a typical trading card game.
In 2010, I attempted to kick off a survival horror like book, but I would remove all combat and only have 1 main enemy chasing you, I would add emphasis on solving the mystery, you would be a group of detectives.
But I decided to stop this project in it’s vary first stages to continue the Exuberant Extraordinaries project, in the end of 2012 I started up this project again, I changed the idea Of you being multiple detectives and decided to add 6 characters (basic idea, not appearance) that I created in my teen years as the detectives, and in early 2013, Detective Duo Master Mysteries was born. You play as a god (dess) who is split in two, a dragon and a devil if you choose girl, or a goblin or ball if you choose boy, who are detectives, when powered up they can recombine together back into the god (dess), when powered down they split back to the duo, basically they solve a mystery while being chase by a culprit, in the end, they trap the culprit to end the mystery.
In mid 2013, while polishing up the Eíntastikólogy project there was a princess controversy going on which I wanted to comment on, so instead as a joke I came up with a idea, that involves a twirling dress (Or “Princess” shaped character) knocking hating feminists a new one.
I had a neat idea when I was thinking up of ways this character would destroy her enemies, I then thought why present this in a gamebook (booklet game then), so a demo was created, you use her twirling as the basis of the game, a demo of it is presented on the front page, it is called Vortex The Pretty.
In early 2014, after many thought I had a old idea but can never figure out how it would be presented, so I created a demo of this idea showing the basic idea of it, the idea is you are thrown in a backdrop, and you use your interactions to shape the story, this demo can of course be found on the front page as “Soul Opinion - Trident Tale”.
In late 2014 and early 2015, I simplified the rule explanations of each project available, as well as changing the project’s name from “Literature Game” to “Booklet Game”. In the rest of 2015, I worked on revising the exuberant extraordinaries engine to be more interactive.
In most of 2015, I had a revelation, for years I had no idea what the point of this project was, I all did was design it though the years, trying to make a video game out of a book, but after thinking long and hard, I finally had a idea of what this project is going to be.
From my perspective after doing long thinking what did video games give me? Why did I like them? After all, when you think about it, all it was is repetitive action, and pattern recognition at it’s vary base, so what made video games so good to me? Well after thinking about it I finally had a idea that it was the content, the environments (the world/lore), the music, the atmosphere, the characters, and the story.
That is what made the journey for me, video games used gameplay to tell a story, so taking this into account, instead of trying to make a video game into a book as originally intended, I'm going to take a book, and instill rules that allow you to take images from that book bend them to display them doing certain actions using your imagination as you perceived them that way.
You, using those actions to play in a story and that story being told though those actions, so taking this idea, I decided to alter all my games to this principal, Exuberant Extraordinaries will be changed to you bending the images for you and your opponent so you guys can beat the crap out of each other, this action will convey a slapstick comedy.
Eintastikolgy will stay mostly the same, with having you bend images and your direct involvement (your hands) conveying monster fighting, thus a adventure with your monster pals, Detective Duo will stay mostly the same, with you bending the images to make the character go around looking for clues while advoiding the culprit, this action will convey a mystery solver.
Vortex The Pretty was more simplified and given more features so you can bend images to have vortex spin on the walls and spin off vertical surfaces into the air, this action will convey a action game, where the action tells of the journey.
And finally Soul Opinion, this remains the same, where you use images to move around in the world, but also use your imagination and interpretation to interact with that world, your actions will create the narrative for that journey.
So that in mind, looking at the fact that my project is a interactive book, I found out that there was already a term for my project out there, and it was called the gamebook, in mid 2016, I finally finished converting Exuberant Extraordinaries to fit term of gamebook.
In mid 2016, the new gold label was created to show that these books are now gamebooks, and I merged soul opinion with another scraped project that I thought have abandoned in 2011 called Trident Tale, taking all the “Trident Tale” exclusive features and including and incorporating them into soul opinion, the mother’s death plot is dropped in favor of you are a kid’s cop plot.
Continuing in mid 2016, I plan on finishing vortex the pretty, I did a overhaul on enemy movement, so instead of envisioning enemies in your imagination, the “TerraTurn” feature will be changed so that the enemy animations will be imprinted on a number of copies of a playfield and you will be shifting around those copies causing the enemy to move.
I also did away with the nuclear elements in vortex the pretty and changed them into nuclear “Keys” I will scale down vortex to four levels and four bosses. During the end of 2016, I bought a tablet to test these games on a casual level, and was horrified how long and drawn out the rule explanation was.
So now I am doing a entire revision on how the game rules are taught for each of my games, I will release revisions of each game during the coming months, this new revision will feature the game rules on each page in brief explanations, and these will be taught when that rule is needed for gameplay.
So it will basically teach gameplay as you are doing it on a need to know basis, vortex the pretty is finished and ready for play, and a month later the tutorial to exuberant extraordinaries has been converted to a full segment featuring the new rule style, in early 2017 the exuberant extraordinaries tutorial was renamed to “Tackle Tangle” and completed with Curiosity Twirls and Kindergarten Khaos.
Little before and at the beginning of spring, Vortex The Pretty was reworked on to fit the new style of that matched exuberant extraordinaries (because the new rule style was altered slightly during exuberant extraordinaries’s conversion), in April, Mermaid Melodies, Bubble Freezing and Construction Destruction was completed. In may, Skyout Tryouts and Jest Jamboree was completed thus completing the Exuberant Extraordinaries conversion.
I then did the Eintastikololgy conversion during the summer (completed in late October), in December I completed the Soul Opinion and Detective Duo rule transition and currently fixing some character designs on exuberant extraordinaries.
In early 2018, the character design updates were complete, and in early spring it was decided I wanted to make the game much simpler, however a situation would come up where I can demonstrate my project using a popular upcoming video game coming out, and in June the sample was complete but did not get any reception.
So one more time did I make a demo using a popular video game, and in late July it was complete, however I did get reception but it was unexpected, many people did not get this project and it was ultimately decided to finally end this project with the feedback provided, ending a 7 year long journey for me.
My goal for this project was originally to get this published to book form, but now, it is retired, see you later. Thanks For Listening.
If you want to contact me, you can use my forum (http://www.literaturegames4all.com/boards/forum.php) or my E-mail Address, at jpickyp@aol.com |