Portfolio III: Reflections

Reflecting on my Twine game: "New Shoes!"

Posted by Anna Heckadon on December 6, 2017

Before you read on, go check out my Twine game here: New Shoes! This post is a reflection on the making of the game. (Also PLEASE NOTE that this game is only about women’s shoes.)

Wow I didn't have much time to do this project! I feel like I could have made it a lot more expansive had I had more time (more shoes, more stores). And also maybe I could have made it more aesthetically pleasing? Like I pretty much stuck to the standard Twine format and didn't do much in the way of formatting the pages differently or changing colours. Maybe I could have made the backgrounds as images of shoe stores? That could have been cool and given it more of a realistic feel of shoe shopping.

Overall I’m actually incredibly pleased with how it turned out! I quite enjoy playing my “New Shoes!” game and I hope others do to! My starting point was really just to branch off from my “Shoes & Personality” audio track I recorded for a pop-up exhibit at the Royal BC Museum last month. It's about how the shoes you wear say a lot about your personality. (For more information on the pop-up exhibit click here.) From the information I gathered online about shoes and personality, I had five points to start. They were,

  1. Ankle booties = aggressive girl
  2. Practical shoes (sneakers) = agreeable
  3. Extremely uncomfortable shoes (heels) = exceptionally calm
  4. Shabby/less expensive shoes (particularly sandals) = liberal
  5. Well-kept shoes = attachment anxiety

There wasn’t much that I could do with number 5 because I made the game about buying new shoes. Obviously new shoes are going to be well-kept, but this point is about what you do with them later on. Are you meticulous about keeping them clean? Or do you not care so much? So, I decided not to include that point and rather just the other four.

For point number 4, technically any shabby/less expensive shoes could indicate a liberal person, but I decided to go with sandals because of one thing the article I read said: “sandal wearing hippies." (Click here to read that article.) Of course I went with an image of a Birkenstock style shoe because those sandals are definitely the stereotypical liberal persons shoe.

For choosing stores, I just picked stores I know and that are located in Victoria. Originally my shoe store list was longer, but making a Twine game gets a little complex behind the scenes so I just decided to keep it to two, with two pairs of shoes each. This would most simply showcase my four points about shoes and personality.

I placed each shoe type in each particular store carefully. I looked the each stores’ website to find shoes and that’s how I came to the decision for which shoes went where. You are more likely to find nice fancy heels (point 3) and ankle booties (1) at Aldo’s, so I placed those shoes in that store in my game. You are also definitely more likely to find some practical sneakers (2) and some cheap sandals (4) at Payless Shoe Source.

Before deciding to make the game about buying new shoes, I was at a loss for how to turn my audio track into a game. I created this Base Game to literally just showcase the points as simply as possible. I showed it to my friends and they liked the idea, but some thought it was a little too sassy. I knew I had to fix that and expand on it because that version was way too short of a game (and maybe a little too sassy). So somehow, it just came to my head that I should make it about buying new shoes.

In the game you have the option of being told what the shoes say about you. You can either get told before you buy them, after, or you don’t ever have to be told what they say about you if you don’t want to. It’s completely up to the player. When you get told what the shoes say about you before you buy them, you have the option of completing the purchase or putting them back and selecting other shoes. When you get told afterwards, you have the option of keeping them or returning them.

Ultimately any option you select will lead you to buying new shoes again. If you buy/keep them, the next slide is about how they’ve worn out and it’s time to buy new shoes. If you return them you get the option of trying on new shoes in the same store or going elsewhere. Either way, the game goes on in circles, just like the realistic course of buying shoes. (Except, of course, in real life you don’t get told what your shoes say about you unless you look that up yourself!)

During the making process of the game it got a little bit messy when I was trying to make sure that all the arrows went to the correct passages. I was also trying to create more generalized passages so that multiple different shoes/stores could go to one passage, so that I wouldn’t have to keep re-making similar ones. I figured that would be easier in terms of the layout of the behind the scenes aspect of my Twine game.

I got the shoe photos from a free image website called Pexels. All images on Pexels are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. As stated in the game itself (in the Aldo store passage), the image I used for ankle booties is actually an ankle boot. The difference is that ankle boots end an inch to four inches above the ankle, whereas ankle booties end right at the angle. I was actually pretty frustrated. I literally could not find anywhere a free image of an ankle bootie! It was driving me insane when I decided I just use an ankle boot image and make a disclaimer. I still wish there had been an actual ankle bootie image available for free!!

Also I made a note in my game and at the beginning of this post that the game is only about women’s shoes. Unfortunately that was because two of the four points about shoes and personality are particularly about women’s shoes (points 1 & 3). I decided to just stick with that and have them all be women’s shoes as I didn’t want the game to get too messy using men’s shoes as well. If I had more points relating to men’s shoes I could have made a more expansive game.

All in all, I really like my game and I hope you like it too! Twine is awesome and I would definitely like to make more games using it in future!


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