Hi everyone and welcome!!! This is the start of a new series of devlogs on narrative design and complex branching in my dark fantasy and horror visual novel! We'll be building up to some deep-dives on how I research and write sensitive themes with care, but before we get there, I've got 10 months of content to share so that it all makes sense!!!! 💪😭

This is because giving thorough and meaningful instruction on how to do any one of these complex things in an absolute vacuum would necessitate a full blown college course! We're not going to do that lol, but I'm hoping though that through sharing my process, it may be interesting, insightful, or inspire you in ways that can help your own projects!

More importantly I'm hype as hell to talk about everything that's going into this monster (😉) of a game. Let's get started!

This devlog will be in three parts:

1. The basic vocabulary of narrative design in choice-based games, to share some fundamentals that will help with understanding what I talk about in this devlog and in future ones. I have drawn stupid (cute) pics for this.

2. Two pieces of basic vocabulary we use in Catalyst: Blind Faith to describe its narrative structure, with more cute illustrations!

3. The branching structure of Catalyst: Blind Faith, showing the most simplified version of its choices and their many resulting paths!

Strap in cause we're about to get technical

PART 1 - BRANCHING GAME DESIGN 101

I said we'd need a college course to really talk about any of this stuff properly so let's poke some fun at that lmao

Branching in games serves a multitude of incredible purposes. Player expression, depth of narrative, and replayability are just a few! We're going to do an ultra-quick crash course on some basic terminology, and save the fancy stuff for a little later!

Just four (4) terms, with cute smiley faces to help us out! 😊 Let's goooo!

COOL AND HELPFUL TERM 1/4:
😎 BRANCHING 😎

"Branching" in games refers to when the story splits into more than one new way. Like a branch on a tree!

It's as shrimple as that

COOL AND HELPFUL TERM 2/4:
😎 ROUTES 😎

"Routes" or "Branches" do not always result from a choice, but they are distinct in the sense that they no longer share the exact same elements. They can have varied art, sound, writing, mechanics, or anything else the game wants to do differently! More on that (in detail) in a minute.

People use many many many more terms than this for choice-based games, but we're focusing on the verbiage used in Catalyst: Blind Faith!

COOL AND HELPFUL TERM 3/4:
😎 COMMON ROUTE 😎

The start of the story, where the branches/routes shoot off from, can go by a few different names! This is specifically when the start of the game has shared events, like in my visual novel. You might be familiar with some of these terms!

We use "Common Route" in Catalyst: Blind Faith.

COOL AND HELPFUL TERM 4/4:
😎 CHOICE MENU 😎

The exciting one! "Choice Menu" refers to UI presented to the player, where they are able to choose between any number of choices in any form. This could be a map where you choose a destination, plain text that lets you express how you feel, or something else entirely.

What matters is that these "Choice Menus" are presented as a clear choice to the player, with the implication that their choice will affect the game thereafter!

It is perfectly valid to want to explore the grumpy branch ☹️❤️

It is REALLY WORTH NOTING that a choice does NOT have to lead to a major or permanent divergence in the story! Many people assume that a meaningful choice in a game must have the weight of a life or death decision, permanently alters the entire course of the game, or affects every element of the game thereafter.

Framed in that way, it may be obvious that other types of choices not only are meaningful, but also are very helpful to complement and emphasize those huge choices when they are presented. I did a talk about the different kinds of choices in games earlier this year, which goes into that big subject in a quick and easy way meant to help anyone at any level of narrative design!

If you would like to check out that 20 minute video (with a quick Q&A at the end) it's RIGHT below this paragraph! There's also some cool links in the description if you like further reading, or are seeking resources to make meaningful choices in your own projects a little easier to execute!

Choices in Visual Novels – What Makes Them Meaningful? (YouTube Link):
https://youtu.be/Xqtra7_jqoA?si=SoJCkfBGUVdfWwV6

If you really like reading about this stuff, one more cool resource that might be interesting or helpful is the VNDev Wiki! They have well-written articles on just about everything. Again, no need to read, but if you'd like these are two cool pages that go into a reasonable amount of detail on the things I have touched on in this devlog so far:

VNDev Wiki: Choice

VNDev Wiki: Branching

PART 2 - OF COURSE CATALYST: BLIND FAITH HAS ITS OWN VOCABULARY, OF COURSE NOTHING COULD BE THAT SIMPLE

We will keep this short and sweet I promise. JUST TWO (2) PHRASES I PROMISE

In our examples above, we clarified the basic vocabulary that many visual novels use. I have two terms to share from Catalyst: Blind Faith which will help with clarity and ease of reference when discussing it at length! I also will not have to constantly try to use other words to explain things we already have vocabulary for yippee!!

You might not be surprised to hear that because of the extensive branching in this choice-based game, we use even more tree language, building on the terms you saw above. Like "branching," it's cute and easy to remember!

HAPPY LITTLE CATALYST: BLIND FAITH TREE TERM 1/2:
🌲 TRUNK 🌲

In Catalyst: Blind Faith, after the common route ends, there is still a central "trunk" of the game. This is not ten separate games in one. This is one very big game, with a vast amount of exploration, character expression, different themes, tones, and endings.

Shared, key elements are a part of this "trunk," which serves MANY important functions.

• Shared starts of physical location descriptions, meetings with main characters, and the start of many combat sequences if they are modified just with in-line variables instead of entirely new chapters
• Major events that occur in many routes for needed, shared continuity
• Making sure the player's "skip" function works as intended on repeat playthroughs for all of the above reasons
• Much more that will be expanded on in future devlogs

We do also have NUMEROUS routes that completely leave the "trunk" and never return. Future devlogs will go into much deeper detail about how this "trunk" works, those large parts of the game that are utterly distinct, and much more weird technical stuff that is way too involved to explain in a single sentence!

Speaking of which!

HAPPY LITTLE TREE TERM 2/2:
🌲 HARD BRANCH 🌲

At the end of the common route in Catalyst: Blind Faith, the player is given a detailed choice menu, in which they can choose from 10 pressing relationships that they can deepen. These relationships pertain to 8 deities in the pantheon, who the protagonist loves (he is not normal about it), though they represent differing abstract aspects of reality (NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT); and two party members, who you can pursue a platonic or romantic relationship with (involving slightly more normalcy)!

These hard branches dictate which endings are available, but more importantly, the hard branch the player chooses sets the tone for the rest of their playthrough. They are very distinct tonally and have dramatically different events. Some are quite linear, while others are packed with hundreds of choices. Some have only one ending, while others have five or more!

All you need to know here is that the term "hard branch" will come up very often in future devlogs (including this one), as this structural element is the heart of the game! It's what the common route builds all context for, and is the main body of the game and its replayability.

Observe, my smiley face masterpiece:

The colorful smiley faces represent the different hard branches. Yes, I drew them with the personalities of each deity/party member. Yes, I had fun. We will have a much prettier graphic momentarily, I promise.

ALRIGHT WE MADE IT THROUGH THE VOCAB, HIGH FIVE, 🖐️ LET'S GET TO THE GOOD STUFF! ✨

PART 3 - NARRATIVE DESIGN IN CATALYST: BLIND FAITH

SEEEEXY GAME DESCRIPTION TIIIIME🔥🩸🩸🩸
(I like this blurb so much it's the new description on our itch.io page!) 

Catalyst: Blind Faith is a dark fantasy and horror visual novel, set in an apocalyptic world where humanity is on the brink of extinction. You shape the fate of a young and troubled priest who is obsessed with finding a cure for the strange phenomenon turning mankind into demons: the Catalyst.

While you dive deep into the ruins that cover the land, you can channel the power of any God in the pantheon through your weakened and fractured body. Every choice you make carries favor with different aspects of reality and influences the nature of your journey, for better or for worse.

Control unrivaled power—at a cost.

Be true to yourself.

Conquer your demons, inside and out.

Choice is truly the name of the game here. You now know a bunch of awesome terms to help us talk about the structure of the game, so I can share this sick flowchart I made over the course of a solid week! From scratch!!!!

ta-daaaaaa✨

This image is MASSIVE and cannot be hosted on itch.io at all! The agony! The text is meant to be legible! I attached the full resolution png and a webp version to this devlog on my Patreon, for everyone, for free, so you can download it to see it more easily in your image viewer of choice! https://www.patreon.com/posts/devlog-narrative-116945211

This is essentially an inverted version of the charts you saw above. The common route begins at the top, and then flows down into our 10 unique hard branches.

Though the structure, length, themes, and content of each hard branch varies WILDLY based on your choices, almost all of them can touch or enter into the trunk at various points in the game. I cannot wait to unpack more about the specific narrative structure and design for each one of these very complex elements of Catalyst: Blind Faith with you all!

In the rest of this devlog series, I'll do deep-dives into:

• Choices in Catalyst: Blind Faith and their consequences (narratively, structurally, and more), how the common route builds context for every hard branch, and the presentation of the choices for each hard branch.
• A spoiler-free dissection the structure of the trunk of the game, including how most hard branches can touch on key events contained within it.
• The basic structural concerns for the Vengeance hard branch, including its thematic choice structure.
• Timey wimey insanity, with a look at how I keep a timeline of events for the game to track continuity and much more!
• A hardcore writing deep-dive into technical considerations for writing an anti-hero who can slide into full blown villainy, how the player's choices directly reflects on our MC's characterization, and the ways that all other characters' depictions are handled with care and consistency across numerous differing routes.
• Unreliable narrative talk and how I like to handle it. A lot of it. With examples. I will be very extra about this and hope you will enjoy. 💅
• A two-part series on sensitivity concerns, research, how I handle writing horror, upholding themes of compassion above all other things, our extreme content filter, and how even the most harrowing content is meant to elevate the rest of our game!

WHEW!

I hope you're as excited as I am. This devlog originally was planned over a month ago, because I wanted to discuss all of the subjects above, to share the work I've been doing on the most sensitive subjects in the script for the game. I rapidly realized (with the help of some very polite and reassuring friends) that to do any service to the amount of research, planning, and considerate execution involved, I really needed to give the amount of work going into this visual novel the room to breathe.

It's still a lot lol so this was definitely the right call!

I'm also deeply looking forward to sharing more art and programming updates, an end of the year recap next month, and MANY more dev streams in our community Discord!

I released this devlog a few hours early as thanks to you all for your support!❤️❤️❤️ The avalanche of incredible feedback, fanart, fanfic, songs that reminded people of the Vengeance hard branch's script (even WIP!), and daily heartfelt messages from people who are excited to see development chugging along means everything. We hit 900 followers on Bluesky too at the time of the original post, and we're now up to over 1,000!!

All of your support on Patreon is helping massively when things have been very challenging for me outside of game dev. No amount of support right now is small, it means so much to me.💖💖

Thank you again so much for your time and for reading! Next month will be an end of year recap, with some hype about major upcoming stuff I'm doing in January!! Hope you enjoyed this devlog too, feel free to let me know here in the comments or in our Discord what you enjoyed or what you are looking forward to seeing next!❤️