In this month's development update we are going to focus on plot, celebrate Steam Scream Fest and tell us a few words about the recent event we attended.
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Joanna might be a bit too cautious to do anything even remotely daring or dangerous herself, so she writes about daring adventures and dangerous magic instead. Yet, she found enough courage to abandon her life in Poland and move to Ireland, and then some years later, she abandoned her life in Ireland to move over to the US. She’s determined to settle there, once she finally chooses which state to reside in.
When she’s not writing or thinking about writing, she plays video games or makes amateur art. She lives the happy life of a recluse, surrounded by her husband, a stuffed red monkey, and a small collection of books she insisted on hauling across two continents.
Joanna Maciejewska is writer for Edge of Sanity, so we spent some time to talk about what you can expect throughout your madness trip to Alaska.
Hello Joanna! Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you become a writer?
Hello Robert! I’m a fantasy and science fiction author and freelance translator based in the United States, but I’m originally from Poland.
As for becoming a writer… one usually becomes a writer by writing. (laughs) My story is likely similar to many writers out there. We don’t wake up one day knowing that we are or will become a writer. In my case, it was the love for stories that made me an avid reader which combined with the need to create my own stories.
That creativity first found its outlet in tabletop RPGs, and ultimately in writing short stories and novels.
Do you have any sources of inspiration in your daily work? Books, comics, video games, weird dreams?
Last week we had a chance to visit Barcelona and showcase Edge of Sanity during Game BCN Demo Day! Hundreds of participants could check our pre-alpha footage and leave valuable feedback that will help us create a better game!
In general, I read books, play video games, watch movies, and talk to my husband to feed my creativity, and really anything can inspire a story: I wrote stories based on a single sentence, random thought, a piece of lyrics, or an interesting image that sparked an idea...
Once, I played a song in a loop for two days straight when I was brainstorming a story inspired by the song.
You now have experience in a book series called Pacts Arcane and Otherwise - was that helpful when writing a story for Edge of Sanity?
Almost everything that is writing is going to help with writing. Well, maybe excluding shopping lists. (laughs) Pacts Arcane and Otherwise is just a fraction of my experience. Before this series was published, I had already finished about half a dozen other novels, wrote and published short stories, run a few tabletop RPGs and small-scale LARPS, and each of them was an experience that left me with something valuable that helped me write the story for Edge of Sanity. And similarly, Edge of Sanity is an experience that will contribute to the projects that will come after it.
Is there any known universe/movie/book/comic/video game that inspired you most when creating a story for Edge of Sanity?
There isn’t anything specific, but when I learned what ideas the team had for Edge of Sanity, I tried to immerse myself in similar settings and atmosphere. Karol, the Art Director, recommended some titles, including The Thing. I’m very picky about horror movies I watch, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and its setting of an unforgiving wintery land, so similar to what the team had in mind for Edge of Sanity, had definitely sparked some ideas.
Could you tell us what happened before the start of the game?
I suppose it depends on how much you want the story spoiled… Discovering what happened in the past and how our character had found himself in his current predicament is part of the game’s story. Let’s just say that it all started shortly after the 1964’s earthquake in Alaska.
A hardworking and smart contractor had found a mysterious stone in the debris. He realized that it had the potential to change the world, so he combined his resources with an elusive millionaire, and thus Prism Organization was founded. What they intended to do and what happened next… Well, you’ll have to play the game to find out as my lips are sealed.
You had a chance to write not only dialogues but also shape the game missions. How different was it compared to writing a story for your books?
At the core, writing a story for the book and a story for a video game are similar, but as they say, the devil is in the details. As a novel writer, I can control the information much more precisely: at any point of the story, I know exactly which information the readers already have and what is concealed which makes it easy to control where the twists and reveals come.
Readers rarely skip chapters or read out of order. In a video game, players have much more freedom and can explore the story in their chosen sequence. Of course, some missions only become available after certain conditions are met, but in other cases, the player is the one to choose which mission or part of the story to explore next, so when writing missions and dialogues, I can’t always assume they have specific bits of knowledge: they might not have gotten to that part yet.
There’s also the matter of brevity. In a book, I can take much longer to unveil a plot or story, play with style or narrative tools, while in video games, information has to be more condensed as reading onscreen isn’t always optimal. As a gamer, I can relate since I’m definitely guilty of sometimes skimming through quest descriptions or dialogues.
Could you offer a few words about one of the characters we meet along the way?
Out of the colorful bunch of the characters players will get to meet, Scot probably stands out the most. He used to be a scientist, but then madness claimed him, and he embraced it with a surprising eagerness, so instead of being a crazed madman performing shady experiments in his evil laboratory, he is mostly himself.
That is, if you don’t mind that communicating with him is somewhat broken as his madness offers him unique perspectives. I think his character will bring a little bit of absurd-lined levity and everyone seeking a moment of respite from the horrors and the darker side of madness will enjoy interacting with him.
Do you see any similarities in game acts vs. book chapters? Is having them making your job easier or the other way around?
To me, book chapters are nothing but a way of organizing a story. I write in scenes, sometimes even out of order, until I’m satisfied that I told the story the way I wanted it to be told. At that stage, I might be moving scenes and events around for better flow or story impact, or rewriting and removing various pieces of the story.
Therefore, in my workflow, chapters come when I have an overview of the events and know how they fit together. I do not plan initially how many chapters I will have or what will go in each chapter, but I know of writers who work this way. At the same time, game acts seem to echo the 3-Act Structure that many writers use to plot out their books, and that has been with us pretty much since ancient times. I don’t have a need to rely on it heavily in my own writing, but I’m familiar with it, so game acts don’t come as something foreign or difficult. It’s just another way of dividing a story into structural pieces.
What’s your favorite element of the game setting?
Why, tentacles of course! (laughs) To me they have the appeal of otherness and eeriness, especially when paired with other horror elements. But in general, what I’m drawn to in settings is how various pieces are connected rather than being drawn to single elements.
Once you’ve consumed enough books, movies, and video games, it sometimes feels like “you’ve seen it all”: elves, robots, zombie goats, and whatnot, so it’s more about how those seemingly seasoned pieces are combined into a unique and fresh setting or story that has the most appeal.
In Hyperion, one of my favorite novels of all time, Dan Simmons managed to combine such unlikely-fitting elements like religion, posthumanism, time travel, AI, and poet John Keats among others into a cohesive, heart-wrenching, and suspenseful story in which all those pieces make perfect sense. Similarly, Edge of Sanity combines survival in an unforgiving environment with madness, corporate conspiracy, and tentacles of course, and that’s the main appeal to me.
Showcasing the game in Barcelona
Last week we had a chance to visit Barcelona and showcase Edge of Sanity during Game BCN Demo Day! Couple of hundreds of participants had a chance to check our pre-alpha footage and leave valuable feedback that will help us create a better game!
Steam Scream Fest
Starting from October 25th, 7:00 PM CEST / 10 AM PT until November 1st, Steam celebrates horror games and Edge of Sanity is part of the event!
If you haven't already, wishlist Edge of Sanity on Steam - it helps with our development a lot!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1897110/Edge_of_Sanity/
So that’s it! We are very approachable, so if you wish to share all kinds of feedback or question, art style related or not, please consider leaving follow here and/or joining our Discord:
We are grateful for all kinds of support! <3
Talk to you soon!
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