To feed or not to feed

Prompt 2: The player has options on many of the different passages. The whole premise of this game is to choose to either feed or not feed different animals while the player is out on a walk in the woods. This seems like a simple and harmless concept until the player chooses incorrectly to either feed or avoid feeding a certain animal. This player may die in certain scenarios, which makes each decision to feed or not feed an animal extremely important. With the simple pattern this game uses at first, it’s very easy to predict where the outcome of each screen takes the player. You feed or pass by one animal after the other until a certain screen comes up that may or may not kill the player based on previous choices they have made in the run. Once getting to the ending sequence, the story unfolds in a unique way, leaving the player with no idea where the next passage will take them. Though most likely not intentional, yes, I am able to go back to where I came from using the back arrow near the top left of the screen. I believe I saw this arrow while debugging, so I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be in the final product. However, I believe having this back arrow makes the game play much better, since I don’t have to start over from scratch when I want to play again with different dispersing of my food. The overall story is simple at first – the player must choose what animals to feed and pass by to survive the walk in the woods. After passing this simple beginning sequence, the player is then taken to a fourth wall-breaking series of events making me think about my decisions throughout the game.

Prompt 2: Describe how the passages are organized.  “To feed or not to feed” is a game of decisions and compromise.  The game begins with a brief intro to introduce the player to their environment and circumstances.  The player is introduced to the general format of the game.  There is a short paragraph with the setting/circumstances of the player.  The first passage introduces the notion that the player has 4 portions of food and that they are on a beautiful lakeshore path with plenty of nature.  The first passage also introduces the general structure of most passages in the game.   The game is based upon the player being given a setting in the first paragraph and then another paragraph about an animal that you could either feed or not feed, hence the title “To feed or not to feed”.  This is the format for the remainder of the passages but instead of a setting, the first paragraph is typically the result of your decision to feed or not to feed each animal.  There is also a setting added to remind the player of how many portions of food remain.  Each animal provides a slightly different prompt and outcome.  Typically there are only two options, to feed or not to feed and the player can anticipate these options, that is until the bear arrives and gives the player no option but to feed.  The game does allow you to reverse your options, but I don’t this that is the intention of the game.  The player must strategically choose which animals to feed for success.  The shape of the story is like a flower where each decision has small offshoots but stick to the main stem.  The theme of the game is to be generous but not too generous, making this game have some strategy involved.

The player has options for choices at almost every moment. I say almost because the player critically does not make any choices when dealing with the consequences of their actions. The options or choices presented to the player remain constant throughout the game's story. The story offers the player the choice, as the title suggests, of whether or not they want to feed the various animals as they walk past them. I had a suspicion that I would constantly be asked whether I wanted to feed some animal or animals and that not feeding them would bring about some negative consequences. You are able to go back to previous places and make a different choice. After discovering that keeping all my food causes me to be killed by a moose I did want to go back and feed some of the animals. After reworking some of the choices I made previously I was able to get to a more favorable ending. The story felt very controlled. As the player, there was a certain level of freedom but only on the surface. Ultimately there were no real choices to meaningfully change how the story played out. The shape of the story was very linear with a simple start and a simple end. The main theme of the story seems to be simply walking the path. Literally and metaphorically the main character is forced to walk through the path and make choices that have unforeseen consequences that can only result in one end.