Branching Dialogue: The Low Road
As a way of making the point-and-click style of The Low Road’s narrative more active for modern players, I developed a series of “Conversation Puzzle” mini-games which pop-up at pivotal moments in the game’s narrative. During these sequences, the player must perform meticulous document analysis to successfully navigate an extensive branching dialogue path. Written in ChatMapper with Lua programming, these puzzles allowed the team to convey essential plot points to the player in a dynamic fashion without having to resort to costly animated cutscenes. While these puzzles work best when actually played (feel free to contact me for a Steam™ code), the following videos and conversation maps should give an idea of the writing that went into these sequences.
Opening Puzzle: “Rev Inc Recon”
In the game’s first conversation puzzle, the player, playing as rookie spy Noomi Kovacs, must manipulate an employee from a rival company, Rev Inc, into revealing the location of a missing employee and the location of their secret facility. In his review for Kotaku, reviewer Nathan Grayson described this puzzle as “one of my favorite video game puzzles of the year.”
Mid-Point Puzzle: “Turn’s Confession”
In this scene, the player must use documents about Lacey’s boss and mentor, Barney “Turn” Turner, in order to force him to move past his “demons” and finish his mission.
More straightforward (and ridiculous!) than the preceeding puzzles, this conversation is entirely text-based. In this scene, Noomi must prove her rhyming ability to impress a co-worker into assisting with her quest.