I was the Narrative Designer.

There are currently 21 hours on the Kanban Board. That said, when I originally added to it, it seems that I miscounted the number of hours I had put down, so I wound up having to add one more to meet the project requirements. I didn’t wind up keeping track of how many hours I actually spent. In the end, most of what was put onto the Kanban Board couldn’t make it into the final project anyway.
A lot of my contributions were either given verbally, or though discord messages, but I did create a text file when making Item descriptions that was later reused for a request for text when the player repeatedly tried to open a locked door without a key.

Things were quite disorganized from the get-go, and the way role division worked made it moreso. The narrative was dependent upon what the designers did, and what the designers did was dependent on what was available in terms of art and programming. Plus, since all the jobs were interconnected in this way, everyone’s roles became heavily blurred and it was near impossible to learn what I ought to do. For instance, a part of my job was to write up the item descriptions, and with this being a puzzle game, you want to be able to hint at how the item is meant to be used in the puzzle… Which is really hard to do when the puzzle and its solution haven’t been designed yet, and it isn’t even known which of the items are even going to be used for puzzles. Aside from this, having twenty one required hours of narrative design on a five minute game made in less than three weeks was something that I wasn’t sure how to do, and the recommendations made in class were to do marketing work instead. Aside from being a completely different field from narrative storytelling, that kind of thing is something I’m rather terrible at.

I’d say the main thing that I realized was the importance of having a Director for projects like this.
With the next group project I work on, someone needs to have the role of director.

Honestly with all of the problems I ran into, I’ve been pretty impressed with how well the other members of the group handled things.

I couldn’t figure out how to attach the file to this devlog, so here’s what that file had in it:

Some basic item descriptions. Can be altered as needed.

Key:

The key to a door. With any luck, the key to the door locking you in.

Apple:

Beloved by teachers, feared by doctors; the ultimate symbol of classroom authority.

Textbook:

An expensive book that's gone unread. Surprisingly lightweight for its size, and strangely unopenable...

Calculator:

A calculator with a broken screen. Perhaps the buttons can still be used for something...

Ruler:

Used to measure distance. Despite this, the units it uses are unrecognizable.

Rock:

A rather heavy rock. Your inner geologist believes it to contain lead.

Binder:

Meant to contain papers, but wholly lacking in this respect.

Beaker:

A glass beaker. A set of colored lines seem to indicate how much it should be filled.

Scissors:

A set of broken scissors. Try as you might, they refuse to close fully. The blades are quite sharp on their own though...

A few different potential lines for interacting with the door when You're not holding a key:

The door refuses to open. Seems that it's locked.

Still locked.

This door is locked as well. If only you had a key.

You can't shake the feeling that you've tried this before. Still locked.

Try again. Go ahead, maybe it'll open next time without a key.

Nope, still locked.