The Grand Library Development Blog
The development process for The Grand Library involved a lot of iteration and changed throughout the project. I began by mapping out the narrative through a timeline, planning out the main narrative and the branching narrative paths that the player could take. This helped me visualise the overall structure of the game and where key decisions would affect the direction of the story (see my original story timeline in the video above). I then moved this structure into Twine to experiment with how the branching narratives would function interactively, and to plan out how different narrative paths would divert and link together through different choices by the player. There is a link to the Twine on the itch.io page and I’ve also shown it in the above video.
The Twine prototype was play tested by myself and friends so I could get feedback on whether the choices made sense and whether the narrative routes felt understandable, and I made adjustments in places where it was not clear. Building on my development of the narrative and the character art concepts I had developed, I then continued developing the comic visually through sketchbooks, making notes alongside sketching pages and planning out the sequential narrative. I also asked for feedback from friends on these sketches to ensure that the sequential narrative was clear and that the reading flow made sense.
As the project continued, it became clear that I had over-scoped the amount of narrative and visual work that I originally planned. Initially, I intended the final outcome to be a fully completed line art physical graphic novel adventure. However, due to the amount of branching content and the time required to complete line art for every page, this was not realistic within the timeframe.
Because of this, I adapted the outcome into a digital PDF format rather than a physical product to save time, adapting from the sketches in my sketchbook. However, unfortunately I ran out of time on this also, so the PDF on itch.io is a work in progress and not complete. The games full narrative itself is however complete and functional in sketchbook form, which I have also submitted. If I were to do the project again, I would want to reduce the narrative scope much earlier on so I could focus more time on finishing the visuals and achieving the line art style and visual identity that I originally intended.