616 Mock Orange Way - Behind the Scenes

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!

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I came up with the original idea for this game around 2018, and long before I came up with the name of the street, the title was simply "meta game". It became a sort of driftnet for many random game ideas I'd been writing down that, individually, didn't seem big enough to build an entire game around (the idea of a player using a hint system with its own secret agenda was one of them).

In 2019, I was playing some very old Macintosh games that I remembered from my childhood, which were black and white with minimal animation (adventure games made with the program World Builder, in particular). I thought it would be a fun idea to create a first-person adventure game with similar look. So many retro-styled games I've seen go for a simplistic color palette with blocky pixels, but I've hardly seen any of these games styled on old Mac games rather than old PC games.

The backstory behind this game's universe is deceptively complicated. It takes place after the events of an unfinished game called "Three to Make Ready", which culminates with three people successfully merging the natural world with the supernatural one. Kevin and Doris are from an unfinished story called "How the Other Half Lives", which takes place in a world where supernatural creatures and phenomena exist in our world, Morgan and Hoyt are from an unfinished story called "The Visitation", which was going to involve an alien visitation in a generic European fantasy setting, Sybella is from "A Split Unkindness" (the only story out of these three that was completed - 616MOW takes place after it), and Kyros is the hunter from the game Kynigos, just in a different role.

Here's a little chart illustrating what I've just described a bit more clearly:

O'Malley, Ollie, Athan, Cob and the pixie are the only characters created specifically for this game.

I originally wanted to use the early Mac look for an adaptation of Robert Sheckley's short story "The Impacted Man", but when the 2020 AdventureJam started getting close, I realized that making 616MOW with this look would work perfectly. Unlike my concept for "The Impacted Man", it was a design choice that made sense, since the game is set in the late '80s. It also adds to the game's surreal, slightly askew nature, since AGS games can't be run on Macs without some serious tweaking.

I thought it would be a fun idea to create a "meta game" that invoked feelings of wonder and delight rather than unease and fear, where the goal of the self-aware characters isn't to scare or intimidate the player, but to share a fun experience with them. I also wanted to subvert the trope of one single character in the game being self-aware while everyone else is completely oblivious and/or a poor, hapless victim of said character's malevolent actions.

I wanted the street this game takes place on to be one that didn't exist, but as I discovered, there a number of streets in America with "Mock Orange" in the name. Mock Orange Lane, Street and Drive were all taken, but Mock Orange Way wasn't.

There are several hints to the true nature of the game on the title screen alone: Traditionally, the mock orange flower symbolizes deceit. The color yellow can also represent deceit, which is why the apartment building the game takes place in is yellow. The building is also loosely based on the apartment building from the 1986 movie Troll, and the number 616 is deceptively innocent (as I'll explain later).

The symbols around the game's name on the title screen are Anglo-Saxon runes. Transliterated, they (roughly) spell out "do not trust your senses". The exterior layout of the apartment bulding also doesn't match the interior layout, which wasn't an intentional design choice, but it fit the slightly askew nature of the game pretty well.

Making the "wait" cursor appear after starting the game was another subtle way of making the player feel more involved in the game, since they essentially "create" the cursor once they've entered their name.

The six music notes heard on the third floor spell out a warning about one of the characters. No spoilers, but the first note in the sequence is B.

In a bit of subtle foreshadowing, there is never any narration when O'Malley is onscreen. Her full name is also a subtle pun.

One definition of "cob" is a small, stout horse, hence why Cob has it as a name.

Making Cob Irish gave me the perfect opportunity to use the word "laddio" in a sentence, which I've been itching to do ever since I discovered the word.

The hunter in Kynigos had no official name, but since the game's title is Greek, giving the hunter a Greek name in 616MOW seemed appropriate. When naming his son, I knew it both had to be Greek and also had to begin with an "A", to make the player connect the "A" that occasionally appears on the wall outside Sybella's apartment with him (of course, this is long before the player learns that O'Malley's name begins with an "A" as well).

The game's icon was a late-night inspiration. I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out, especially how pleasingly symmetrical and rune-like it is.

The web-like rune that randomly appears on one of the floors is a symbol called the Web of Wyrd. It contains the shapes of all Anglo-Saxon runes, and represents the interconnectivity of the past, present and future.

Unlike all the other characters, the pixie's design was created a few days after the start of the jam. I thought of just a few key features I wanted to add one night, then added everything else as I was drawing her the next day. Her very 80's off-the-shoulder top is one of those on-the-fly additions, as is her deliberate lack of a belly button, her antennae, and her non-pointed ears.

The sound of Cob changing back is the sound of vegetation rustling combined with a rubber object being manipulated. One of the episodes of the classic OTR program Lights Out featured people being turned inside out, and the sound effect used for this was a wet rubber glove being turned inside out. The sound of Doris' tree growing (which only happens if you side with Sybella at the start) is a slightly edited recording of a piece of leather being stretched.

The name of the band Toast Goblins (mentioned if you look at Athan's posters) is a phrase I used in Space Quest: The Time Machination. I liked the phrase so much that I felt it needed to be used more than once.

If you help Athan earlier in the game, then return to his room after you are released from your apartment, you'll learn how Sybella's curse was lifted.

Kevin's wardrobe and overall appearance is from an Inktober drawing from 2019. Morgan and Hoyt were featured in another Inktober drawing.

In a form of foreshadowing that is almost impossible to see due to my artistic incompetence, there are some traces of a light blue powder on the floor in front of the armchair in Kevin's apartment.

The extra eyes the monster has on its body are meant to be the eyes of its victims.

The story behind Ollie's arm was lifted directly from Graph Waldeyer's short sci-fi story "The 4-D Doodler".

Calling Doris a simydad (pronounced "sim-EE-dad") rather than a dryad was inspired by L. Sprague DeCampe's short story "The Hardwood Pile", in which a wood nymph associated with a maple tree clarifies that since she is a maple spirit, she is a sphendamniad (from the Greek word for "maple"), not a dryad.

Virtually all of my games have been in color, so working only in black and white was an interesting change of pace. Of course, some elements (like the gemstone puzzle and the orb) had to be in color. Ironically, most of the colored parts of the game are connected to puzzles that don't need to be solved in order to finish the game.

In order to keep the authentic classic Mac look, I used the original Chicago and Geneva fonts, the various button and window graphics, and the basic World Builder game layout. I also imported all the textures from MacPaint into Paint Shop Pro 7 and used them liberally to make the characters and backgrounds. I tried saving the sound effects as mono sounds with a very low bitrate, but these either wouldn't always play correctly in AGS or didn't quite turn out the way I wanted. The year of the Change coincidentally is the same year as the release of the Macintosh, as well as King's Quest (the world of the KQ series is alluded to in Three to Make Ready). If you click the spot in the game where the Macintosh logo should be (but isn't), you'll get a little Easter Egg.

The puzzle that reveals Morgan's backstory was taken from an episode of the OTR show Box 13 called "Last Will and Nursery Rhyme". The original puzzle had a lot more breadth and subtlety to it, but this made the puzzle I had in mind far too complex compared to all the other optional puzzles in 616MOW, so hopefully I'll be able to incorporate elements of it into a puzzle for a future game.

The inspiration for the "trapped mouse" puzzle came from an obscure game published by Sierra On-Line called Stay Tooned!, which also takes place inside an apartment building with a lot of crazy things going on. A lot of the random shenanigans you encounter during the game involve some very strange and creative things happening to your mouse cursor. At one point, a cartoon dog catches and eats your cursor and you have to get him to puke it up in order to continue your game.

There were a lot more conversations and details I wanted to add to the game to make it a more cohesive experience, but due to the time limit, I had to settle for only adding essential material.

I've never seen a game with meta elements do anything major with a game's save/restore mechanics, which I felt was an area with lot of untapped potential, hence the various save/restore gimmicks I tried in 616MOW. I also thought that having a character suddenly appear behind a GUI would be a fun addition.

There's a chance that you'll see Athan speak in binary if he appears at the end of the game. It's not just random ones and zeroes - he actually is saying a phrase that can be translated from binary into English.

The randomly selected comments from the characters in the endgame are a way of making them seem more "alive". For once, they aren't sticking to a script. If you look at it a certain way, it's like they're choosing what they want to say to you (from a list of pre-written options, yes, but still...).

I came up with the non-meta ending in just a couple of hours, long after I'd established the main story and plot points. I hadn't thought of coming up with an alternative ending until then, and I think it meshes remarkably well with the rest of the game, all things considered.

Ollie's comment about the building's number being 616 instead of 666 is a bit of intentional irony. A fragment of the New Testament labeled Papyrus 115, which wasn't translated until the late 20th century, suggests that the Number of the Beast isn't 666, but 616. This adds yet another bit of symbolic deception to the title screen, since the supposedly harmless number in the game's name may actually be the number associated with the father of lies.

At the start of the game, you may notice that the sprite never explicitly says she wants to get out of the building - she actually wants to get out of the game, and attempts to gain the player's trust in order to help her do this. In a similar vein, the mysterious conversations about "this place" being poorly maintained are referring to the game as well. (And yes, this game does exist in the same universe as the Thalia James series.)

The extra details and secrets hidden throughout the game (most of which are connected to a particular character) are completely optional, but if you uncover all of them, you get an extra suprise during the ending. Since none of the sprite's hints will help you discover them, here's a brief walkthrough for accessing all of them (highlight the lines below each title to uncover them):

Kevin:
-Look at the flyer about nacre on the bulletin board near the front door.
-After the incident with Kevin and the discovery of the bag of bluish powder, talk to Kevin about it.

Morgan:
-Flip through the entire book of nursery rhymes in Kyros' room. -Look at the album in Kyros' room. -When the clock appears in Morgan's room, interact with it and listen to her story.
-Talk to her again (there should be a new option which brings up the topic of the band).

Hoyt:
-After helping Morgan and after you're released from your room, go to the fourth floor - Hoyt is there.
-Talk to Hoyt, then pet him.
-Choose "New friend." from the dialog that pops up.

Athan:
-Look at the "lost pendant" poster on the bulletin board.
-The pendant is on Sybella's coffee table. Click around until it shows up, then take it.
-Go to Kyros' apartment and tell him you have the pendant (he says you can visit Athan).
-Go to Athan's room, look at his "Shrine to Losers", and talk to him about it.
-Guess who his girlfriend is, then talk to him until he's convinced that he can be honest with her.

Cob:
-After talking to him about himself during your first conversation with him, ask about his name and guess the pronunciation correctly.

Ollie:
-Ask Kevin about how he feels about his neighbors (he warns you not to ask Ollie about his arm).
-Ask Ollie about his arm.

Sybella:
-Look at or touch the trinket sitting on Kevin's table.
-Go to Sybella's room and click on the puzzle box on her kitchen counter. -Use the gemstone alphabet to open the box. -Rotate the dials until they spell out the word "OPEN" (in gemstones).

Music:
-While you're wandering the floors, you may occasionally hear a series of musical notes play on the third floor.
-Play this tune on the piano in Kyros' room.

Color:
-Occasionally, some patches of color will appear on the fourth floor. Look at them, then go to Sybella's room. -There is an item in Sybella's room that the first name of each color spells out. Touch it.

The character you encounter if you 100% the game is the protagonist of a much larger game that I'm currently designing. Hard to say when it will be completed at this time, but I do aim to finish it one of these days.

Sketches of the various characters:

The only major design alteration Cob went through was changing his tank top into a tie-dye shirt with ripped-off sleeves.

Ollie's name wasn't added until sometime later - until then, he was just "conspiracy theorist".

Sketches of O'Malley (plus a few copies of art of Handsome Jack's hair from the Borderlands series, which I referenced heavily in order to get her swoop looking just right).

One of the first drawings of Kevin and Doris, from when they were originally created (around 2008). The collar Kevin is wearing is a device that allows him and Skelter to speak while in Skelter's body.

More sketches and concepts about Kevin, Doris and their world for the story I planned to feature them in (not sure who the woman in the top-right corner of the first page is). I think Kevin looks much better with feathered hair.

Here are the original designs for Morgan and Hoyt, from around 2010. Morgan's headband translated to an 80's-style outfit surprisingly well.

And lastly, here's the daily log I used to keep track of my progress:

4/21: setting up game, importing codes, linked up all rooms, made base apartment room, made neutral sprites for all characters

4/22: drew player's, morgan's and ollie's apt, created labels for all rooms, trying to fix problems with verb coin code, adding menus, adding intro text, drew gems for gemstone guide, had to fix problem where i didn't get a response from clicking mouse on anything except guis, assigning views to characters, working on dialog option formatting, fixed problem with dialog going by too fast (accidentally removed vital line from code - oops)

4/23: woken up much earlier than usual - took the opportunity to add lots of the dialog (up to where char is imprisoned), made apt 7 bg, made forest bg, creating different sprites for characters, made pixie character, nude kevin and ollie on cob, implemented hint button, created kyros bg, created kitchen closeup

4/24: made laundry room bg and monster, working on guis, made kitchen closeup sequence, figuring out variable sequences, writing additional cutscenes, adding character expressions, made timira's sprites, working on apartment hallway bg

4/25: importing, making code for char sprites (tedious and worrisome, but the end result seems worth the effort), made piano gui, made various cryptic symbols/messages, made bgs for apt hallways (3 major bgs left), made hotspot labels for all exits, added name guessing and best friend dialog, tweaking hotspot verbs

4/26: tweaking verb guis, adding code, added cursor, made athan's and syb's room, working on puzzle box, fixed problem with menu guis, added help window, added some sound effects, adding box puzzle (code works great!), tested savegame renaming code-seems to work - some lack of motivation and feelings of tedium - i may just be tired today

4/27: finished kevin's room, made skelter sprite, adding objs to rooms, working on scripts, found more sounds, created title screen and wait cursor, working on end speech

4/28: added tenants conversations (chapter 0), adding various scripts and dialogs, made anne's room bgs and closeups for ring, arm and cob's name, keys sprite, adding most conversations

4/29: importing more dialog, created orange animation, implemented athan scene, trying to play through game (got as far as end of intro, started adding random details), adding details to endgame scene, adding scripts and dialog, added gem guide flash, wrote box scene, kevin confrontation scene, wroteout hints, added parts to ending

4/30: added secrets variable, integrating hint system and goblin cache, had to overhaul dummy savegame system when the one i came up with sometime earlier didn't work properly (got a bit anxious over that), importer button sprites, had relocate dialog box because AGS's custom dialog option has no straightforward way of doing scrolling and i didn't want to spend tim learning how to use a custom scrolling dialog script, refining post-laundry cutscene and "load this!" sequence, plotting out when conversations are accessable

5/1: tested skelter scene, trying to play through game, linked dialog to chars, made icon, tested hoyt scene, wrote extra conversations for all chapters, added whispers, added random endgame dialog for some chars, imported sounds for knife block falling, monster spell, sealing spell

5/2: slight panic when i couldn't figure out how to remove yarn, still playtestting and proofreading, fixed hotspot labels for exits (kept disappearing at awkward times), imported more sfx, tweaked piano puzzle, played until start of chap 6

5/3: adding endgame topics, played thru sybella path, playing thru kevin path,tweaked puzzle box, adding sfx, tested pixie ending, had to add extra variable to make sure player didn't solve piano puzzle by playing an incorrect sequence, fixed issue with cob's dialog where it wouldn't end - TWICE (damn it, cob!), playtesting game

5/4: playtesting, added one extra line of dialog about 616 vs 666

5/5: Jam ends

5/7: fixed spelling error and small bug related to solving puzzle box

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