Lum’s Last Day

With this game I had two goals: (1) get more comfortable with Twine and (2) flesh out the backstory of a new D&D character I had created. It is set the morning of the day Lum, a centaur druid, leaves home to seek their destiny. It includes an inventory system as well as a hub-and-spoke narrative that updates as the player moves through the space and makes various choices.

Deliberately, nearly all of the content in the game is optional; I had in mind a backstory for Lum, but not really a strong feel for their motivations or opinions. Filling the house with pieces of their past and portents of the trip ahead means the player – or I – can define who Lum is by what they choose to take or leave behind.

This game was an amusing lesson in scope. I limited myself to just two rooms (plus the dream sequence, in which I offered a branching narrative that quickly collapsed back and reused several passages), and still managed to put down ~4000 words in the end. Pitched but cut content included flipping through Lum’s journal and meeting a couple townsfolk after leaving the house.