Twelve Floors — Storyline, game concept, game mechanics — Which one came first?

The other day I asked on my IG what topics you would like to know more about in the context of game development and this one appealed to me: Which one came first when developing Twelve Floors — the storyline, game concept, game mechanics or other aspects?

A new world

Instead of beating around the bush, the immediate answer is storyline. The idea of Twelve Floors was born last year right when the pandemic started. Before the pandemic,I was playing around with different kinds of game engines, one of them being Phaser.js, a browser-based game engine. I basically made a small little world and that was it — no storyline, no game mechanics, no other characters except the player. Only a camera with a few environmental game objects.

Enter game mechanics

Then, I moved on to Unity and tried mobile game development to see where it would bring me. Like all beginners, I tried really hard to come up with good game mechanics, tested several mobile game ideas and pushed them out for real-world feedback. But I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, they all lacked something in my opinion. By then, the idea of implementing a story had germinated and it slowly grew into a must-have.

Lack of story

It was then I pulled myself together to write a short story(really short). Whether or not it has in any way any relation to me, you will have to find out yourself. But the point is, stories can have a great impact on emotions, feelings, thoughts, opinions, ideas and everything psychological. While I’m not a hardcore gamer, I find certain games with really interesting stories attractive. I guess the story element is the missing piece from the previous attempts. Without this element, the game is as empty as a being without a soul.

Combining them all

Here’s what I think about game development: Books are films that take place in the readers’ minds. This is why we go to the movies and say “Oh, the book is better.”. But movies bring out the best story on a screen and bless the audience with emotions. Games with stories take this to another level by adding player control. The players get to control their actions and see through the consequences, sometimes through the real world too. Finally, if there is for each story a book, a movie and a game, I definitely look forward to hearing “Oh, the game is much better!”.

So, at this point, would you still say the storyline came first for Twelve Floors? Which aspect would you look forward to in a game like Twelve Floors? Lemme know!