The Overgrowth

This project pushed two sides of my craft at once: storytelling and systems. I treated it as a stress test for character development and worldbuilding, and as a sprint to pick up a new programming language. Lua was unfamiliar territory, but I learned enough to build robust dialogue options and make the interactions feel intentional rather than tacked-on.

Worldbuilding for “The Overgrowth” leaned heavily on cinematography and sensory detail. I designed scenes to read like shots: framed vistas, deliberate soundscapes, tactile descriptions that cue the player where to look and how to feel. That attention to sensory layering didn’t just make the world prettier — it created affordances for gameplay and narrative beats to land with more weight.

Early playtests taught an important lesson about entry design. I originally spawned the player in the middle of the forest to encourage exploration, but testers—especially newer players—reported feeling overwhelmed by the open options and unsure where to start. To reduce cognitive load without stripping away discovery, I moved the spawn point into one of the houses. The house acts as a controlled lens into the world: it isolates initial stimuli, provides a clear orientation, and lets each subsequent choice feel deliberate. New players get a manageable first scene; returning players still have the freedom to branch outward. Each starting encounter becomes its own memorable, impactful experience rather than a blur of possibilities.

Design decisions like these—balancing openness with signposting, narrative texture with technical constraints—are exactly why I enjoy building games. They force you to think holistically: what do players need to know, feel, and do in the next five minutes, and how does that scale into the systems and story you want across the whole play session? The result here is a small, optimized world that feels bold, tactile, and welcoming to both newcomers and veterans.