Behold, the ripening of another world.
– Unknown, Three Skies
Well, Dwellers, I guess I can call myself a “published” author now.
I can’t decide if the air quotes are necessary or not. As of January 24th, 2023, I officially have something paid for that’s out in public circulation. Those of you that have been following me for a bit may remember that I was working on doing the story for a heretofore unnamed game that a friend of mine’s studio was putting together. I had (have) a project page about it and everything. That game, Three Skies, is finally out in the wild.
I took a bit to decide what, exactly, I wanted to write about here regarding the launch and decided that, in order to keep things on brand, I’d spend most of the time going over what it was like working through this sort of project – the utter difference in style, delivering on deadlines, creating what is ultimately someone else’s vision. And I will do that, but I’d be remiss not to do a brief shill for the game itself.
Three Skies is a fantasy take on a Pokémon style of game. You control an Empath – someone who has no powers on his or her own, but by utilizing conduits of energy can bolster the power of the people that join up with them. A calamity has befallen the continent where you begin and you’re doing what you can to find out both why it occurred and what can be done to stop something like it from happening again. This mission takes you all over the continent and embroils you in deeper mysteries as well as local issues, helping you to build your team and begin to set things right in ways you hadn’t planned. Check it out at playthreeskies.com to get more.
Writing the story, or maybe it’s better called the script, was a wholly different experience than what I’m used to. First and foremost, as a novelist I am only really ever beholden to myself and what I want to do. The direction I want to take, the beats I want to hit, the twists and turns I want to weave. That was thrown out the window on day one. I’d talked with the creator a bit on his leadup to starting and had all sorts of ideas on what sort of world seemed cool to me, but aside from scoring one major win (Which I won’t discuss due to spoiler reasons), essentially none of my original ideas passed first muster.
As I most recently mentioned in my Dwellers post, I’m a huge fan of eldritch / cosmic horror themes. I’m also a stickler for inventing new things – unfamiliar lore, more outlandish ideas, so on and so forth. That wasn’t what he was after. I get why, of course. Weird concepts are harder to sell. They’re a challenge to get in that first foothold. Also, he’s really got a thing for more traditional beats. He wanted more of a high-fantasy setting than I was intending. Elves, dwarves, and the like. Not generally my bag, but it’s also not my baby, so that’s quite alright. I mean, I say that, but it took me… a good bit of time to convince myself that it was what it was. I tried to steer things more my way (selfishly, I might add) for a while before accepting the state of things and working. As I said, this was his brain child. It’s success will be his direction, his design. In the end, I’m just there to put a nice coat of paint on it.
And I want that to be a damn good coat. So, I got to work. Biographies, zone descriptions, foundations of new religions and histories of nations, character interactions and quips. From front to back, Season 1 clocks in at just under 152k words. The vast majority of that comes from the main story itself, and 100% of that story is done in dialog. That was the second challenge, and probably the biggest. We’ve all read novels – painting a scene has always seemed fundamental to telling a story. Laying out the location, the ambiance, the sights and sounds and smells. That stuff wasn’t mine anymore. I could (and did) talk with the creator on what I was envisioning when writing scenes and we’d have our back and forths there, then he’d bring his final decisions to the artists, they’d put something together, and I’d make adjustments to what I wrote based on what they came back with.
I’d be lying if I said that process wasn’t a little frustrating, but on a logical level I know it’s the right way to do things. I can’t be in charge of that sort of thing – it’s a collaboration. The creator has an art direction in mind and it’s my job to make things work in that setting. Those constraints ended up being interesting to work inside – guard rails that helped me pain inside the lines. And let me tell you, without guard rails I am absolutely prone to run wild. This no doubt helped me keep things on track for the designer’s vision.
The third challenge came around the one of the core concepts of the game. I mentioned it’s a Pokémon-style game, so there’s a lot of hero collecting going on. Unlike Pokémon, however, all of these characters you’re recruiting are just that – characters. They aren’t animals that say their name and that’s all. They have backstories. Personalities. To this point, the creator wanted almost every single obtainable character to be included in the story in some manner. With ~80 characters, this was… daunting. I obviously couldn’t give each the care I’d normally give in a novel, so it was on me to try and inject as much personality as possible in extremely limited windows. I feel I did an alright job with that most of the time, but I certainly could have done better. It’s one of the spots I think was my weakest, and it bugs me that I couldn’t get things as polished as I would like.
Sorry if that all sounded like a bunch of complaining, but I wanted to get the difficulties out of the way first. I mean this in no uncertain terms – I loved that I had this opportunity. I loved that I got to make a story – a real one – and put it into a genre and medium where I tend to find them lacking at best. I’ve got more planned – much, much more – for its future and want desperately to see it succeed so that we can continue the journey of this new Empath. I loved growing my skillset by being forced to think and work out of the box. And, despite me droning on about constraints, I did get to build religions whole-cloth with little knuckle-slapping when I got out of hand. I did get out of hand every so often, though. Believe that.
I am excited for people to get through some of the reveals, to learn things as the characters do. I hope that I’ve made characters that people can relate to, that I’ve made a world that’s compelling. One familiar enough to ease into but different enough to intrigue. This began as something wildly outside my wheelhouse that came with a great deal of stress but ended up as something close to my heart. It’s not my baby, but I’d like to think of it as at least a nephew. One I’m proud to have as part of the family.
And now, for the weekly LEGO. Look at this crab, how top tier is that? These came from a 3-in-1 set, where there are 3 different books for 3 different builds you can make using the same pieces. I opted for the biggest one since that’s most in keeping with why I’m doing this in the first place.
Thank you again, Dwellers, for bearing with me all this time. I do hope you’ll give Three Skies a try. Everyone involved has put a lot of love into it, and will continue to do so for as long as it lives. It’s all of our duties to give the players the best experience in every way possible.
Themeattics 