Spoiler warning for everything in the demo! Also: I go into a lot of detail here. Some of what I write about you may consider to be (fairly vague) thematic spoilers. You may also disagree with my conclusions; that's fine. I'm not trying to tell you the "right" reading for the text, just what I was thinking about when writing it.

Also, though I'm choosing the "Game Design" post type, this devlog is about writing, which is not really the same thing – but "Postmortem" didn't seem exactly right, either. Please don't yell at me itch moderators

When I first wrote the script for the demo, I didn't intend it to be the first part of the story that I would release to the public in VN form. Though I think that there is a specific kind of reader who will enjoy it as an introduction to the story, the actual beginning will be a bit different – more direct in some respects, more focused on intrigue and action. (In the main game, the demo will be included as an unlockable side chapter, maybe automatically unlocked from the very start.)

So why do it this way? Honestly, mostly for one reason: after searching for photo backgrounds online and realizing that I could get away with only commissioning a few CGs, releasing The Other Island as a demo seemed like a nice, cost-effective way to get something out there. Also, I really wanted to test the engine in action before launching the game proper.

The script was, however, always intended to be something you could read before the main game. It found its form as a character study that introduces details about the unnamed protagonist's life through a simple adventure story, slowly building towards some kind of understanding of the weird life they live – and, more crucially, how they interpret their condition. The ambiguity is the key here: since the plot receives no kind of real conclusion, it is left open how much of what the protagonist believes about themselves and their situation is simply their own perception of how things are. This idea, which I think makes it intriguing and compelling as a standalone story, is what really drove me towards releasing The Other Island as its own thing.

The narrative style is somewhat inspired by modernist literature, particularly in the fragmentary structure and the character writing. Maybe there's a certain fixation on the epistemic as well. Though the main game will be a bit closer to the traditional stock VN style, combining literary fiction and genre influences is something I'm very interested in doing, and there will be more side chapters that also function as experiments in style and form.

An important motif, as seen in the title, is the Other – specifically, how the Self can be seen through it. The protagonist's hunt for the other island (and the other person they assume might live there) is, in many ways, a hunt for their self-actualization and self-understanding: they are trying to make sense of their own situation by seeing it reflected in the Other. Their wildest dreams take the form of not simply escaping the island, but instead not having been alone in the first place; conjecturing another person who has experienced what they are experiencing.

Keeping in mind that this is what the text is aiming towards, let's just take a quick look through what the individual scenes are doing. First, the opening, the part before the title.

Formally, it does the recurring thing where the standard VN dialogue box is abandoned in favor of simply placing the text in paragraphs, as if you were reading a novel. Most obviously, this allows the game to be a bit more playful with narrative time – days and weeks can pass in sentences in these segments. It's a very important part of how I wanted to convey the monotony of the protagonist's existence: they can live through long periods of time that just don't merit more description.

It grants the text more distance from the protagonist in other ways, too. The normal VN view is focused on immediate sensory perceptions and thoughts, but this way, the game can get more indirect with what it's describing. The narrative mode allows a lot of things to be explained very quickly without clogging the pacing with long scenes of the protagonist thinking about what they are going to do and how.

Another thing: the game introduces the "Self reflected in the Other" motif immediately by starting with a description of the other island that is actually telling the reader about the one the protagonist lives on by explaining how they are similar. I always try to go for thematically punchy openings, and I think this one sets things up very neatly.

Then the computer scene, which is among the more lore-heavy ones. There's some fairly direct exposition in it, but it's mostly worldbuilding fluff – the most important things aren't said directly.

First of all, it tries to answer the question "if the protagonist has a computer, why don't they just email someone for help?" by showing that their interaction with the space internet is limited to being able to download files through a vague mechanism. I thought this was very important to establish, or else CinemaSins would kill me.

If you're wondering why the protagonist even has a computer in the first place, it's mostly just plot convenience; otherwise, they wouldn't really know anything about the world they live in, which would kind of suck – or make the story into an isekai, I guess. I intend to be pretty serious about worldbuilding details such as "the galaxy has thousands of languages in it and many are in active use in space", and it's just a lot more convenient if the protagonist can know things. Their daily life is also more interesting this way.

Besides, you can think of the VN as a science fiction version of the classic deserted island story. A motif that frequently shows up in those is the protagonist being able to get news from the outside world – messages in a bottle, post, or other documents finding their way to the island. I think being able to download random files online is simply the science fiction version of this.

Another crucial thing set up here is that the story happens in a world where various alien species have their own psychic powers. I'd actually call establishing this the main purpose of the scene. It's a worldbuilding detail that's present in a very direct way in the rest of the story, but if this is the first part of it that you read, you wouldn't know. But now you know.

You could also say that the scene portrays the protagonist's isolation and their alienation from the larger world they live in – everything they know (well, apart from their mother tongue, maybe) they seem to have learned by reading stuff online. Described here is the very specific kind of loneliness of knowing that a world exists somewhere out there, but being stuck where you are. (Holy shit, is this a pandemic novel??? Well, maybe)

After that, there are a few scenes that dig a little deeper into the protagonist's desire to visit the other island.

The key line in the first one is this: "It was useless to dream of going there. No point in planning anything like that when they were barely capable of taking care of themselves." It presents the quest as some kind of test they are setting up for themselves – for them, being able to brave the journey is a sign of being able to survive in general.

I won't go too deep into that now, but generally speaking, this perspective is heavily gendered in the text. The archetype the protagonist is attempting to emulate is the survivalist action hero – they base their self-worth around being physically and emotionally prepared for whatever awaits them both on the other island and in their future. Also, the harpoon, a (phallic) weapon, represents their increased ability to thrive in their environment.

Then there's the campfire scene, which establishes the protagonist's fantasy of meeting another person on the other island. Not much deep subtext there, so I'm not gonna say anything else – just remember what the Other represents in the text.

Soon, the protagonist is off to the other island. The section before that is mostly just setting up the narrative logic of why they chose to undertake the journey regardless of the risks; I think it's thematically more resonant if their decision has an aura of desperation around it.

The swim itself is another part where the prose is working pretty directly. I will note that the part where the protagonist almost drowns sets up a parallel between the ocean and space – a pretty common thing in science fiction in its various forms. Here it represents how the journey to the island is intertwined with the protagonist's desire to escape the planet and how they believe that by completing it, they will prove themselves capable of getting off and surviving in the world.

The island is truly empty, and there is no Other to discover. The protagonist is alone. Or are they?

In the night scene, the novel format is adopted to keep things ambiguous. For some time, I considered getting a sprite for the khass; it would have paid off the isolation of only looking at empty backgrounds throughout the game. But doing it this way is a little less satisfying and more vague in a way I like – the protagonist isn't sure what's going on, so perhaps the reader should be a bit confused as well. By the end of the game, the fox decides to be pretty optimistic about where things are headed, but the reader remains capable of making the opposite interpretation. Maybe it really just was a hallucination.

Regardless of what the truth of the nightly encounter is (you will find out, and it may be more complex than what you're imagining), after waking up, the protagonist clearly finds themselves more inspired to push on.

An important detail is told here: the protagonist is not entirely without purpose, but has a very vague message left for them ("One day they will come, and you have to be ready.") The point of revealing it here is that the protagonist's newfound determination is, on some level, just a reaffirmation of the role they have chosen to play in response to the message. They believe that some kind of threat awaits them in the future and view everything they do, from their daily training to the trek to the other island, as a test of their preparedness.

The swim back is described in a slightly different narrative mode, with less immediacy, to avoid repetition – a game this short doesn't need two identical scenes of a fox swimming to a place. I also wanted to keep the ending pretty tight, as much of it is just letting the plot dominoes fall and bringing the protagonist back to the status quo.

In the last scene, they reflect a bit on what they have experienced and what they believe it means. The reader is free to disagree; you could challenge the protagonist's optimistic outlook. The final CG, set during the sunset, is in visual opposition with the dawn of the title screen – a symbolic day has passed, and soon another will begin. But have things really changed for the protagonist, or are they clinging to another empty hope? Have they found the Other, themselves, or neither?

Well, I guess that is a question the story will have to answer very literally. But feel free to draw your own conclusions for now.

Anyway, this was a (not so brief) explanation of the history of the script, its core ideas, and how it conveys them. Hope you found it interesting! I'm also planning to do a writeup about the process of building the game engine and its design principles; it will probably be pretty technical, but maybe people will still enjoy reading it.