Introducing: The Tunnel!

Welcome to The Tunnel!

The Tunnel is a short story about a space paramedic stuck in a desperate situation after an environmental disaster. She has to use her wits (and medical experience) to try and keep herself and her tiny band of survivors in one piece as they make a go for a faraway rescue beacon, using an old maintenance tunnel to make their way. It uses visual novel decision trees and some TTRPG style stats, and it’s definitely meant to be played twice (once with each main “build” of the character).

After my experience making My Hot Girlfriend, I decided to resurrect an older (circa 2014) game idea of mine, using Yarn Spinner! I actually started the old project in a much earlier version of Yarn Spinner, but life got in the way and the old artwork and writing I did for it got buried (like an abandoned tunnel, you might say). But my recent experience making a visual novel with a few other simple elements mixed in was so positive, and one night, I had the shower inspiration to build this one again!

I actually designed most of it on paper during Thanksgiving weekend, jusssst before starting my new job at Game Developer. From there, I started writing some of the dialogue and searching for an art pack that might suit the project, but decided, after looking around a bit, that I’d try my hand at (simple) pixel art again. I actually drew a number of assets way back when, and I'm using them as... inspiration this time around.

As with all of my projects, I’m not exactly aiming for groundbreaking. I’m not any kind of talented artist (or scripter), but I’m having fun learning and proud of myself for sticking to things even when they look like something my dog might do. I've uploaded some WIP art to the project so you can see my direction: it's simple, and it's colorful, and I hope it conveys a good tone for the project.

I finished a screenplay last year that I had started circa 2012, so this is a bit in keeping with all of that too.

I made some serious progress this weekend, mainly digging much further under the hood with Yarnspinner and truly getting comfortable writing more simple custom functions that I figured I’d start off the project here on Itch, and write the first proper dev log. As of today, I'm confident in my scene structure and core functionality.

I’m scoping small (as per usual), but in terms of the story, I am going for a bit more breadth and depth than my last project, and targeting closer to a ten minute experience for a full playthrough.

In terms of player experience goals, I’m aiming to convey a sense of EMT-appropriate emotional realism—what it’s like to be responsible for people’s health in an emergency, to balance hope and the gut-wrenching fear that things are going very badly—balanced (maybe bolstered?) with appealing sci-fi vibes. I’m very much trying to get closer to making the kinds of games I want to play, albeit simpler and scoped appropriately for my own skill set! These are themes and aesthetics that I obviously enjoy and think about a lot, and I hope some of this will resonate with others as well.

As with my last game, I’m not putting a specific due date here (with 2.5 jobs and a busy grappling training schedule, my life is kind of wild), but I’ll continue to chip away and make progress (and update here!)