Dumb Ways to Survive
Dumb Ways to Survive was my first game writing gig, and I was fortunate to work with such a talented team for this initial experience. I interacted with most of the team at some point, however I worked closest with the game's designers. I received guidance from a narrative lead, quickly showing how capable I was, and as a result was given a great amount of creative freedom.
Through a comfortable cycle of review, feedback, and iteration, we ensured that the tone of the game remained consistent with the existing IP's zany characters and humorous heart. I honoured the existing personalities of the characters, while expanding on hinted traits, bringing depth through dialogue, motivations, and backstories.
Writer
Role
Mobile
Device
Roguelite Survival
Genre
PlaySide Studios
Company
My Experience
I loved the challenge of injecting bite-sized humour into each item's description and each unique death scene. I capitalized on puns and alliteration to ensure each item unlock was not only rewarded with the item itself, but a funny play on words or concepts that would amuse the player.
Utilizing the item description space was a great way to solidify the tone of the game, bringing a silliness to even the mundane objects occupying space in the player's inventory.
The Dumb Ways to Die characters each have distinct visual flair and a history of memorable deaths. My challenge was to take the hints of personality and traits displayed through their previous appearances in the Dumb Ways games, and build them into fleshed-out characters, each with a unique voice.
Using their designated workstation, their visual design, and the limited lore from previous games as a foundation, I developed each personality while respecting the tone of the game we were building. Nailing the dialogue was integral, especially since this was the first game where the beans have speaking roles.
While all the characters are helpful due to the nature of their roles, they all have wildly different reasons for being out in the wilderness and helping the player character.
Determining each character's motives, fears, and quirks shaped the dialogue and clearly defined their personalities, lending to more interesting interactions.
Cutscenes provided the most collaborative process out of all the writing. The cutscenes went through multiple iterations internally, involving storyboards and adjustments to the script to ensure we kept to a previously decided maximum time. Then, they went through a couple iterations with the external team.
Being involved in the development of these cutscenes was insanely rewarding, not just for me, but for the entire team, as we got to see our joint labour of love materialize. The opening cutscene and one of the interim cutscenes were also used for marketing to build hype for the game in the weeks leading up to its release.
What Players Have to Say
Srestha Dutta
Amazing ! The graphics, story, the cute beans, I love everything about it 😍❤️ !!
Adithya
🔥 Great Graphics,Storyline, Characters etc. Must Play!
Hein Htut Aung
the animations and graphic are so cute and soothing and I love the story. but the control is a bit struggling. overall is a good game.
Tanya Doty
really cute graphics. survival style game with a story line and it just really sucks you in.
Jackson Tan
Very nice adventure game with nice story. I wish there was more content.
Billy Budiman
good game and story, please develop the game and you can add more new story... I just loved the game
Netanel Keidar
love it!!! storyline is nice. the maps and weapons and creatures all keep you engaged. great game!!
Maria Villena
amazing gameplay, graphics, storyline
Kole Sobush
I love it! it's like a more story driven starve together style game