May 2012
4 posts
Making some changes
Good morning all,
We’ll be making some changes to the alpha today, so do expect some interruptions to service.
Thanks!
Why Storytelling is the ultimate weapon →
April 2012
6 posts
Having A Chat →
Hello All - We’re discussing some important design decisions over in the forum, take a look if you fancy weighing in.
6 tags
An Education - testing in the classroom
First up some big news. Last week saw us jumping on a train down to Kent in order to put wAlpha0.3 in front of some students and teachers. It was our intention to learn a few things:
How does our game perform with young students? We were testing with a group of 10-12 year olds. It’s always been our contention that The Written World needs to be accessible to younger players. Equally it’s our...
Writing/Design - Interesting read →
Alpha testers note
Hi Guys, A quick note to all of our tremendous Alpha testers - thanks for your patience and your time. We’re taking the alpha down for a few hours today to upload some fixes. See you soon!
1 tag
March 2012
3 posts
Inspiration
Good Morning!
We’ve been deep at work ironing out the a few issues on the Story Writing part of the game, and are now moving our attention to getting the rest of the experience ship shape for some alpha testing action over the next month.
We’ve also started to think about how the map is going to work… our inspiration is below - stay tuned.
Amazing use of imagery in a short story - check it... →
How I went from writing 2,000 words a day to... →
Interesting…
More blog posts coming soon - apologies for the delay :)
February 2012
3 posts
Alpha testing in the Inner Circle
A delicious piece of information for you all:
We had our first playtest with an Inner Circle member very recently, and it went swimmingly.
We had a hectic weekend preceding getting it all ship-shape, a marathon of bug fixing and polish. We implemented a UI redesign for these tests and it was great to see it in use. While we may have been terrified that everything was about to break, we...
Updates and Alpha News
Hello Everyone
We’d love to thank all of you for your patience - We’ve had a hectic couple of weeks since our Kickstarter spectacularly succeeded. That time has been spent planning our development, contacting various of our pledge supporters and of course navigating the particulars of Amazon Payments.
What’s been going on
This past week Simon has had the pleasure of dining...
December 2011
2 posts
Kick-Started - It's Live!
If you can feel a slight tingle of anticipation it’s because we’ve finally launched our Kickstarter! Check us out. Watch the video here, or over on our Kickstarter page - and please let as many people as possible know about it.
In other exciting news: We’ve been playtesting all day today - check out some of the beautiful people who turned up to play with us:
November 2011
8 posts
Playing At Writing part 2: Rhianna Pratchett has a...
The rather lovely Rhianna Pratchett was kind enough to sit down with our very own Simon Fox for a chat about what happens when you fill up your games with delightful words. This is part 2 of that interview, part 1 can be found here.
Simon Fox: We’ve spoken before about the idea of building a blank slate character for players to inhabit against building a complex character - which do you feel...
Dev Blog: It's all semantics
We’ve been looking into ways of measuring how to reward writers in the Written World, by thinking in terms of understanding the “quality” of the stories. So the question is - how do we take a ruler to success in story writing?
We first started looking at the most basic level - firstly checking if people have finished the story and played all their encounter cards. Then we...
Dev Blog: Interfacing our fears
Here at WWHQ we’re hard at work cleaning up the alpha version of our game, which we will soon be testing with students in schools.
Of course users means user interfaces, and the code-heavy testing interface we have been using to pull together functionality just isn’t going to cut it for our testers.
We’re pleased with what we’ve produced, but also aware that this is a step on a longer joumey...
In 2007, half of the best selling novels in Japan... →
The Written World comes to life in Abney Cemetary
This weekend we shot our promo video. In one day. With faultless direction and starring Al, our very own star of stage and screen and surrounded by a sunny Abney Park Cemetery the entire day was a tale in consummate professionalism.
We will post it as soon as it is ready and fresh from the oven, in the meantime check out some of the stills taken on the day.
Pretty magical we think...
Playing at writing: Rhianna Pratchett has a chat.
Hark at this: The utterly delightful Rhianna Pratchett has been kind enough to sit down with our very own Simon Fox for a chin-wag about the various delicious things that happen when words and play meet in a blender. We’ve split this into 2 parts for the easiest word consumption experience. Part 2 to come very soon indeed. Simon Fox: When you decided to write for a career, what is it that...
Study shows gamer kids are more creative... →
Once upon a time...
Welcome to WWHQ (catchy huh?) we are building a game that challenges people to tell stories. The Written World takes the mechanics of a game and combines this with the act of telling stories. It is a 2-player game of narrator versus protagonist. The narrator controls the story; defining the plot whilst creating scenarios, obstacles, and challenges. The protagonist creates a character that she...