Trabia Garden

It's time for one of those posts where I ramble about an aspect of videogames! I've been thinking about how videogames guide the player to where they need to go.

My first experience with videogames, if I recall correctly, was the Sonic the Hedgehog games we had for our SEGA Master System II. Working out where you're supposed to go in a 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game is pretty simple. There are two directions: left and right. When you start the level, Sonic is facing right. Go right.

'The character is facing in the direction you need to go' is simple and clear. You'll see it in a lot of sidescrolling platformers, such as the Donkey Kong Country series and early Mario games. Unfortunately, as environments become more complex, 'just point the character in the correct direction at the start of an area, and the player can just continue in that direction until the area is finished' becomes less helpful.

I was eleven years old when I played Pokémon Red. It was my first RPG. It wasn't sidescrolling; you could move in four directions. But, to start with, I was able to deduce where I needed to go.

In Pokémon Red, you start in your bedroom, which has one exit. Great; obviously I left the room. You talk to your mum, who says that Professor Oak, next door, is looking for you. Perfect; I know where I'm supposed to be going. I left the house and went to the building next door, which, according to the sign outside, was Oak's research lab.

In the lab, Oak's grandson told me that he wasn't there.

I was extremely confused.

Was I... was I supposed to wait for Professor Oak?

What you're supposed to do is try to leave town, at which point Oak will show up and tell you it's dangerous. The game designers had assumed the player would want to explore, and would naturally end up taking the road out of town. But they'd made the mistake of giving me a clear but unachievable goal: meet Professor Oak in his lab. Professor Oak was not in his lab. Therefore, I concluded I was expected to wait for his return.

I just checked whether the FireRed remake changed this sequence at all. The answer: it doesn't change the dialogue, but it does make a small visual change to the path out of town - removing the long grass for the first couple of steps - to make it clearer that it's a path, and Oak now shows up just before you actually enter the grass, rather than just afterwards. If you're playing the original for the first time and don't know how to interpret the 'long grass' texture, you might not realise you can walk on it at all.

It's easy to slip up when you're trying to guide the player, particularly if they're a new player and not yet fully acquainted with the conventions of games! But there are a lot of tools developers use to tell the player where to go next, both obvious and subtle. For example:

- The character faces the direction you need to go, as mentioned. This tends to be most useful in 2D games where the possible directions are tightly limited.

- You're told where to go with an icon on a map, or overlaid onto the environment. This is common in open-world games, where the environment is vast and freely explorable. If 'run two hundred miles away from the objective and do something else' is an option, you need to make sure the player will always be able to track the objective down easily, regardless of where they are in the game world. This is a very reliable way of making sure the player can get where they need to go, but it can be immersion-breaking, so some games, such as Assassin's Creed or Horizon Zero Dawn, come up with an in-world explanation for why these helpful 'your destination is here' icons exist.

- You're told where to go through dialogue. This is pretty straightforward. For example, at the start of Final Fantasy VIII, Quistis tells you to go to the Fire Cavern and that it's 'east of here'. Unfortunately, there's no way to double-check this instruction; if the player gets distracted exploring the nearby town, they might forget where they're supposed to be going. I once had to restart Final Fantasy VII from the beginning because I'd set it down for too long and I had no idea where I had to go next. Final Fantasy IX is the first Final Fantasy game that really accounts for the possibility that the player will forget their destination; if you visit any marsh in the world, you can ask the moogle there for directions.

- A companion indicates where to go. You'll see this in the Uncharted series, where the protagonist is often travelling with allies. Sometimes your ally will travel ahead of you, so you just need to follow them. Sometimes they'll just stand near where you're supposed to be going, as a way of drawing your attention to it. Occasionally, if you've lingered in the same area for too long and the game concludes you're not sure where you're meant to be going, your companion will call to you to point out, for example, a ladder.

- You're told where to go using light. This is a useful one for dark sequences. If you shine a light on the door the player needs to go through, the player's attention will be drawn to the light and they'll notice that, oh, hey, there's a doorway there.

- You're told where to go using bright, eye-catching colours. When you're looking around an area in The Last of Us, the way out is often marked with yellow, e.g. you'll need to pass through a gate that has torn yellow caution tape attached to it. In games where you're expected to climb, climbable ledges on a dark wall or cliff face will often be white to contrast with the background. As with the use of light, the goal is to catch the player's eye and make them realise there's a way to progress over here.

- You're not told where to go. The player is expected to explore with minimal guidance until they stumble across their destination; they may be given a map that fills itself in as they explore, so they can check where they haven't yet been. You'll see this in survival horror games, which are designed to keep the player uncertain and off-balance. It works best in enclosed environments, such as a building; if an environment is too large and open, it can be frustrating and confusing to try to find where you're meant to be going. In the case of Silent Hill 2, I can navigate the hospital or the hotel, but I often get lost when I'm in the streets of the town.

Those are the player guidance methods I can think of! Let me know if you have any to add.

There are definitely things I haven't covered here. For example, I'm sure game designers have clever ways of indicating 'this is a surface you can stand on' versus 'this is just part of the background', but they're so clever I can't pin them down. I suppose Spyro games will visibly put gems in out-of-the-way places to indicate to the player that it's possible to get there; I wonder what strategies less collectible-heavy games use.

Old Fanfiction Book Club is an occasional project in which I revisit and annotate my embarrassing early fanfiction. As my recent Final Fantasy VIII fic Wake Up was a rewrite of I Need You, one of the oldest and most embarrassing things I’ve ever written, it seems an appropriate time to annotate I Need You!

I originally posted I Need You in May 2002, at the age of thirteen. It was a tiny one-shot, but it’s significant because it’s the first fic I’d ever completed; my only previous effort at fanfiction was Rachel’s Pokémon Journey, a meandering Pokémon fic I never finished (and the subject of a previous Old Fanfiction Book Club series). I Need You was also my first effort at writing romance; it was a Squall/Zell fic, because I’d played Final Fantasy VIII and come away going ‘oh, I understand this shipping thing now!’

I Need You was terrible. My grasp of characterisation was questionable; my grasp of human behaviour was nonexistent. Let’s dive in and learn how thirteen-year-old Riona thought romance worked.


( I Need You, with annotations. )


I poke fun at my younger self’s writing skills in these posts, because, well, I was not a great writer. But I’m glad I didn’t let my inexperience keep me from writing, because the only way to gain that experience is to write. I owe a lot to that kid for all the effort she put in, and I hope she’ll forgive me for laughing a little at her now.

Something that recently struck me: if my thirteen-year-old self somehow discovered my present-day blog and fanfiction and website, she would think I’m the coolest person in the world. She would absolutely subscribe to me and read everything I wrote and want to be my friend. I’m glad to know I’ve made her proud.

I'm enjoying having a website!

Before I made it, I was concerned that maintaining a website might feel unrewarding, given that it's not really a format that encourages feedback. If you update your website, it can be hard to tell whether anyone saw the update at all.

But it feels good to have somewhere I can just talk as much as I like about Final Fantasy VIII! I've added a few new pages since I first mentioned the site here, and it's fun to watch it grow, even if there's no way of knowing whether anyone else is seeing the new additions. As perhaps evidenced by the fact that I've kept up this blog for twenty years, I just like talking about things I enjoy!

(If you're curious about what's changed, though, there's a rundown on the updates page!)

Just the fact that I have this site is encouraging me to think about new projects related to Final Fantasy VIII, too. The first romance fic I ever wrote - and, in fact, the first fic I ever completed - was I Need You, a short and terrible Squall/Zell fic I penned at the age of thirteen. Maybe it'd be fun to attempt to rewrite it now that a couple of decades have passed.

I'm trying to resist rereading the original until I've finished my rewrite, but I remember the concept made absolutely no sense. Here is the plot of my first ever attempt at romance:

- Zell creepily watches Squall while he sleeps, going ':( oh no I love him but he's got Rinoa'.
- Zell tells the sleeping Squall aloud that he loves him and kisses him on the forehead.
- Zell SUDDENLY PASSES OUT ON SQUALL'S BEDROOM FLOOR FOR NO REASON.
- Squall wakes up, finds Zell sleeping on his floor, goes 'seems normal' and puts Zell in the bed with him.
- As he drifts off again, Squall half-remembers Zell BEING CREEPY and murmurs, 'I think I love you too.'

Absolute nonsense. It's a real challenge to write something that follows a similar trajectory but actually feels in-character and halfway plausible. Dear thirteen-year-old Riona: if you want a character to fall asleep on the floor, there should probably be a reason!

I'm also having fun revisiting my old silly projects relating to this game. I managed to dig out my old homemade Triple Triad cards and post scans of them on the Triple Triad page. Please enjoy my ludicrous attempt to draw a Geezard, or the made-up card where I just drew a Neopet and gave it devil horns.

There's a part of me going, Hey, if you added the Balamb Garden flight deck, you could let visitors fly to locations from other Final Fantasy games. Please stay calm, Riona; let's at least try to keep this project on a reasonable scale.

I can't remember if I've ever asked this before, but, if I have, it's probably high time I asked it again.

What mistakes, misconceptions and/or superstitions do you remember from playing videogames as a child? (Or, indeed, as an adult.)

For example, when my brother Joseph and I were kids, we'd often play Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on our Sega Master System II. Or, to be more precise, Joseph would play while I watched. I loved the Sonic games but couldn't play them myself; I couldn't handle being responsible for Sonic's life. I felt terrible watching Sonic the Hedgehog die and knowing it was my fault. (This is exactly why I can't play Supermassive games.)

The fourth stage of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the Sky High Zone, Act 1. At one point, this stage features a hang glider you're supposed to ride across a chasm. You can use the directional buttons to tilt the hang glider up or down in order to control its descent.

We did not know you could manoeuvre the hang glider. The preceding zone, the Under Ground Zone, featured mine carts you couldn't control at all; they just took you wherever they wanted to go. We assumed the hang glider was the same. In our heads, you got on the hang glider and you were at the mercy of the winds.

Which meant we couldn't get across the chasm.

Every one of our playthroughs of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 went like this: we'd play through the Under Ground Zone, which took maybe ten minutes, and then we'd throw ourselves fruitlessly onto the hang glider and fall onto the spikes below until we ran out of lives, and then we'd have to start the whole game over again.

There were maybe two exciting moments when we accidentally made it to the other side and went on with the game, convinced that the winds had been kind to us. But it was very rare for us to see any of the rest of the game. Almost every one of our many playthroughs of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ended four stages in, with the remaining seventeen stages hopelessly out of reach.

And yet we kept on replaying the start of the game, and we enjoyed it! Thinking back, I'm amazed by how patient we were.

(Part of our enjoyment came from our absolute obsession with all the game's weird glitches. We were convinced they pointed to secrets waiting to be discovered, rather than just being programming oddities.)

Speaking of bizarre levels of childhood patience, I'm still impressed by thirteen-year-old me's willingness to play through almost the entirety of Final Fantasy VIII just spamming GFs in every battle, because I didn't understand the junction system. 'You have very low stats and every attack takes thirty seconds' is an absolutely ludicrous way to play that game, but somehow I persevered. (I persevered because I was really attached to Squall.)

And, of course, there's the time General Caraway told the sniper team 'you'll take the shot at 20.00', and I obediently waited until I had twenty hours on the game clock and was then puzzled when nothing happened.

Tell me of your own gaming misconceptions; I'd love to hear about them!

The official Deltarune Spamton Sweepstakes page is absolutely fascinating. It makes me so nostalgic for the Internet around the turn of the millennium, when there were countless maze-like personal websites filled with spinning GIFs and music files and weird little secrets.

The Internet's a lot more polished these days; it's easier to avoid viruses, and to find what you're looking for. But it's so much less fun and less personal, now that everything's commercialised and clustered onto a handful of sites.

I'm so programmed not to click on banner ads; it took real effort to tell myself 'no, the banner ads are part of this, there's obviously going to be more Deltarune content behind them, you should click on them.'

I love the entries you can uncover from Noelle's blog (and that she's a Livejournal/Dreamwidth-style blogger!). The stories of being unsettled by game glitches or assigning a weird significance to them; I was like that as a kid. My brother and I would obsess over glitches in the Sonic the Hedgehog Master System games and try to uncover the secrets behind them. There were no secrets; they were just glitches. But we were convinced there had to be some hidden meaning, some secret room they were pointing to, something for us to find.

There's something so magical about videogames when you're a kid, before you really grasp that everything in there was intentionally programmed in, and there's only so much they can feasibly contain. There were whole unfathomable worlds in those discs and cartridges.

As an adult playing Final Fantasy VIII, when Squall falls asleep and you start playing as Laguna, it's a weird event, but you accept that it's just part of the story. As a kid, I thought something had gone wrong; I thought the game had decided to make me someone else by itself; I was afraid of saving in case I never went back to playing as Squall. The game could have done anything; the story could have gone anywhere.

Anyway, going back to the sweepstakes! Although I love the videogame tales, my favourite of Noelle's blog entries isn't videogame-related; it's this entry about Kris.

Kris and Noelle's relationship is absolutely fascinating to me, and it becomes more so with everything we learn about it. Their strange childhood friendship that it doesn't seem Noelle's ever known how to interpret. The unkind pranks Kris plays, the odd sense of distance and loss between them. And then Snowgrave.

I don't know when we'll get to play more Deltarune, but I can't wait to find out more about what's going on. I've got so many questions about that game and just how deep its shadows go. In a way, perhaps it's managed to capture a little of the unknowable magic of games when I was a kid.

Riona's Head: Hey, you should get back to one of the games you've started but never finished. Tales of the Abyss? Tales of Berseria? Spirit of Justice? Steins;Gate? Lucid9?
Riona's Heart: Hey, how long has it been since you last played Final Fantasy VIII?

I told myself a few years back that I couldn't possibly justify ever playing Final Fantasy VIII again. I'd played it so much that I almost knew it by heart. I don't need to replay this game; it's written into me. But the Persona series, with its combination of attending school and fighting monsters, left me thinking about Balamb Garden, and somehow I've found myself back here.

(I'm playing the original, ported without changes to PS3, rather than the remaster. I was excited for the remaster when I first heard about it, but then I learnt it had blurred the backgrounds and reduced Squall's range of movement to eight directions, so I decided against getting it. It's just not Final Fantasy VIII if you can't run around in smooth circles and watch your teammates follow you in perfect step. I'm glad a version exists on more modern consoles, though, so new players can still discover this beautiful catastrophe of a game.)

The fight between Squall and Seifer in the opening cutscene is still rad as hell, over two decades later. Pretty incredible stuff for 1999 3D animation in a videogame, even considering that it's an FMV.

Look at all of Squall's movements! I love him. The realistically proportioned models in Final Fantasy VIII allow for more human, subtle body language than the ones in the original Final Fantasy VII, which had to rely on large gestures, although we're not yet at the point of being able to see facial expressions outside FMVs.

Considering that Final Fantasy VII came out on the same hardware, two years earlier, Final Fantasy VIII is a remarkable graphical upgrade. Square had obviously learnt a lot from their early efforts at 3D modelling and animation.

Balamb Garden! This place feels so familiar. It's good to be home.

Love that this late-nineties game includes an in-game school intranet forum that ends up being shut down because the pupils just use it for arguments and talking about how hot the teachers are. Truly ahead of its time.

The way background NPCs move around, and sometimes appear in a particular area and sometimes don't, is a really cool touch that helps the world feel more alive. I don't remember seeing anything like it before I played this game. In the other games I'd played, characters were either programmed to be in an area or they weren't; there wasn't this element of chance.

This was also the first game I played in which you could overhear conversations NPCs were having amongst themselves, without actually being involved in the conversation. Again, a nice little touch that makes the world feel more real. People aren't just standing around, waiting to talk to you; they've got their own lives going on!

Still can't believe I got lost straight out of the gate on my first playthrough, spent four literal hours wandering Balamb before I found the Fire Cavern, and somehow still stuck with this game. I'm impressed both by thirteen-year-old Riona's patience and by her lack of observational skills.

It's hard to express how much this game means to me. I'm glad it exists.

Let's keep up the momentum on Old Fanfiction Book Club! We've almost hit the point where I stopped writing, and I don't want to deprive you of baby Riona's literary masterwork for another two years.


Previously on Old Fanfiction Book Club: having read a lot of melodramatic angstfic, I throw a character off a cliff for no good reason.

Original author's note on chapter eighteen: Okay, okay, I'll update! Sheesh. (I posted this in July 2002, two months after the last update; I was just about to turn fourteen.)


( Rachel's Pokémon Journey, Chapter Eighteen, with annotations. )


Chapter eighteen, as mentioned, was posted in July of 2002, and then six months passed before I posted chapter nineteen, below, in January of 2003. (Judging from the author's note, it's possible this delay was due to being overwhelmed by the number of characters.) I think there's visible improvement in the writing style, although it's possible the shift to third person exaggerates the difference. My writing's still a bit clumsy in this chapter, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

By this point I'm well into my fourteenth year. (Or... technically my fifteenth year, I suppose, because your first year ends when you turn one. Anyway, I'm fourteen and a half.)


Original author's note on chapter nineteen: Okay, there are now officially TOO MANY CHARACTERS. If I put in any more than the eight plus one (deceased) already in Rachel’s group, it’s going to get way too complicated. It already IS too complicated, actually.

Sorry to the others who sent in characters. They’ll all get cameo appearances, of course, but I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. Again, I’m really really sorry.

I’m also going to stop writing personal responses to all the reviewers. I just don’t have enough time anymore. Hopefully this won’t lower the amount of reviews I get...

Oh, and I’m writing this chapter in third-person. If all goes well, it’s staying that way.


( Rachel's Pokémon Journey, Chapter Nineteen, with annotations. )


In the next instalment of Old Fanfiction Book Club: we meet a helpful young man and nothing goes wrong.

Only one instalment to go before we run out of Rachel's Pokémon Journey! I'm sort of sad I didn't stick with this fic for longer; I'd love to know where all this nonsense was going. I certainly had no idea when I was writing it.

Back in the year 2000, twelve-year-old Riona (or Mew, as she called herself at the time), bright-eyed and enthusiastic and fairly new to the Internet, created a genuinely terrible Pokémon website. Every page background was a mosaic of anime screenshots or tiny animated Pokémon GIFs, rendering any text completely illegible. My solution to this was to highlight all the text on the website in bright yellow. It was magnificently hideous.

I have seen my childhood website cited in multiple places as an example of bad website design.

People can be cruel, so you might think this negative attention would have led to flames, perhaps discouraging twelve-year-old Riona from having a visible presence on the Internet in the future. Fortunately, I misspelled my own e-mail address on every single page, so I never received any direct feedback on my website at all.

My terrible website lasted a lot longer than it had any right to, but eventually the hoster did take it down. I was too embarrassed to even glance at it for a long time, but earlier this year I dug into the Wayback Machine to salvage what I could find of it. I'm not the sort of historian who can just ignore the ugly aspects of my own history (although that may in part be because I'm not a historian at all).

Anyway! I didn't actually come here to drag my heartfelt childhood attempt at website creation; there's another reason I'm making this entry. Here's what I wrote on the website's update page in October of 2000 (although I was unhelpfully unspecific about the actual date; the entry is just dated 'still in October'):

Oh, and I've begun a fanfic called 'Rachel's Pokémon Journey'. My FIRST EVER Fanfic! 4 chapters are up already- go take a look!

It's now October of 2020, and that means I've been writing for twenty years! I've written over a million words of fiction in that time, and I've had a blast doing it.

What a great hobby. I don't know what I'd have done without it. I've found work that relies on skills I developed by writing fanfiction. I've made excellent friends through fandom (hi!). I've received so many lovely comments. I've improved my confidence. I've spent countless pleasant hours writing fun dialogue and/or psychologically devastating my favourite characters.

In good times, writing's fun. At times when I haven't been doing so well, it's helped me to keep my head up and keep going; my psychological wellbeing stands on a sea of broken fictional characters. Whatever my state of mind, it's always been a good way to spend my time.

I don't regret a moment I've spent writing, even if some of my early work is embarrassing to look back on now. If I hadn't written the Pokémon self-insert or the terrible Friends angst or the gratuitously dark Jak II fanfiction, I'd never have improved!

It's hard for me to express how glad I am that I picked up this habit twenty years ago. You may have had some questionable ideas about website design, twelve-year-old me, but I can't fault your decision to try out this fanfiction thing. (I'm also pleased with my younger self for being brave enough to start posting it online; I wouldn't have expected it of her!)

It seems appropriate to end this entry with the 'home' button I created for my childhood website. Please enjoy this genuine masterpiece of early-2000s graphic design by a twelve-year-old. I was very proud of this. (From the update page: 'I did a pretty big update to the Moving Pictures Section, and made a Home link button. See- there it is, down at the bottom! Isn't it CUTE?')

I've finished the main route of Chaos;Child!

Of all the fucked-up murder videogames I've played, Chaos;Child is the most fucked up, which is no small feat; it's a little too much for me at points. It was interesting (and horrifying), but the characters never entirely clicked with me and I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to go back and do the rest of the routes.

Spoilers; highlight to read: I did really like the scene where Takuru, deprived of all sensory input, ends up visualising Serika and having warm, friendly interactions with her, despite the fact that she ruined his life. He needs someone, and he still loves her; he can't help himself. This is incredibly up my street, and if I do play the rest of the routes it'll probably be so I can write fanfiction about it.

Chaos;Child is drowning in pacing issues and weird fanservice, but it's got some of the most impactful voice acting I've ever heard. It makes me believe 'yes, this character is in fear for his life' like no other canon I've ever experienced. Rumours that I've made specific save files for points at which the protagonist does particularly good terrified breathing have yet to be confirmed.


More Scrubs notes:

- This rewatch has really clicked for me. The constant sexism is still grating, but it's still a really enjoyable show and I enjoy its messed-up cast. (Sitcoms are generally a good place to look if you enjoy characters who are psychological disasters.)

- I love Dr Cox's habitual angry nose touch.

- I had no recollection of Dr Cox enthusiastically miming Kelso banging his wife (while yelling 'BAM BAM BAM BAM') in 'My Case Study'. I don't know how it managed to slip my mind, because it is extremely memorable.

- I've reread all the Scrubs fanfiction I wrote when I was seventeen, and it's much less terrible than I expected! There are things I'd do differently if I were writing these fics today, absolutely - a little less overexplaining, maybe a little more awareness of how fucked-up I made the JD/Cox relationship sometimes, hopefully I'd be better at disguising the fact I have no idea how hospitals work - but they're still fun. I'm proud of teenage me. I think I'm a bit hard on her sometimes.

(I do, however, have a bone to pick with seventeen-year-old Riona for making Dr Cox call JD by both my aunt's and my cousin's names during a sex scene. I can understand that she was probably casting around desperately - you run out of female names very quickly if you're writing Scrubs fanfiction - but still!)

- I want to write some Scrubs fanfiction now; I think it'd be really interesting to go back and write for this fandom again! But I don't really have any ideas, alas, and I'm struggling to recapture the characters' voices.

The other problem is that I'm mainly interested in Dr Cox/JD and Dr Cox/Elliot, both verbally abusive age-gap power-imbalance relationships, and I'm not sure how to write fic that keeps the humour of the canon and doesn't veer too hard into 'wait, this is horrifying'. This is a line I didn't always manage to walk as a teenager. These relationships aren't healthy and I don't intend to make them out to be, but I also don't want to make them so unsettling that the fic ceases to be fun. It's tricky!

Previously on Old Fanfiction Book Club: after eight chapters of absolutely no plot, Rachel suddenly develops a psychic connection with a Team Rocket member who can travel between universes, a concept that is dropped as quickly as it appears.

The original author's note for chapter eleven: WARNING: From this chapter onwards, viewpoints will be changing. I advise you read whose viewpoint it is to avoid becoming confused. This chapter introduces a completely random person called Monica -_-'


( Rachel's Pokémon Journey, Chapter Eleven, with annotations. )


The original author's note for chapter twelve: ACK! Sorry for not updating yesterday!

I was gonna switch back to Rachel and leave the cliffhanger hanging there, but then I figured I’d get lynched.


( Rachel's Pokémon Journey, Chapter Twelve, with annotations. )


In the next instalment of Old Fanfiction Book Club: I attempt to go back to writing about a normal Pokémon journey, which is a bit disconcerting after all this ridiculous plot.