This one just got completely out of hand.

Last Friday, Alexis and I were putting the finishing touches to the House of Chimes, a private members’ club area for Exceptional Friends. The content was ready to go, but the actual entry to the House was lacking a certain something – a sense of occasion, if you like. Alex wanted a little introductory storylet: a kind of personality test, whereby the player decides why Mr Chimes admitted them to such an exclusive club. The idea is that all members are unique in some way. So if you’re particularly Shadowy, you might choose the ‘friend to cats’ option. or if you’ve bought a zubmarine, you could choose the ‘explorer of the depths’ branch.

‘How many of these do you want?’ I said. ‘Oh, go wild,’ he said.

At some point that afternoon, I looked up and found I’d written 13 branches, a new record for the game. I was rather pleased with myself. It did look a bit silly on the page, but what the hell. Each of my 13 branches took note of the player’s chosen status, but gave exactly the same result. Writing 13 tailored results for a story the player will only see once seemed a bit crazy. So I threw it over to Alex for subbing and got on with something else.

When I looked back at it, half an hour later, there were 15 branches. A few minutes later there were 19. I mailed Alex, suggesting he might want to step away from the keyboard. ‘I CAN’T,’ he replied. By six o’clock the House of Chimes storylet had 28 branches and had gone from looking ridiculous on the page to looking COMPLETELY INSANE on the page.

(I needed two monitors for this screenshot)

This struck me as 1. a good illustration of the old adage that ‘too much is too much, but far too much is just right’, and 2. hilarious. So I shut down my browser and got stuck into The Witcher 2. But Alex wasn’t done yet. This morning I got an email with the subject line ‘THEY SAID IT COULDN’T BE DONE’. Turns out he spent the Bank Holiday weekend making up individual results for all 28 branches. Then he added another four, just to be thorough.

Just to be clear, this is a storylet that the majority of our players won’t ever see, since it’s attached to the Exceptional Friend-only House of Chimes. And even the players who do see it will only get to choose once. And that choice will have very little effect on their game, beyond bragging rights. So why blow a perfectly good weekend on it?

Partly because, as a tiny company, we can just get away with this kind of shit in a way that, say, Bethesda and Activision can’t. Partly to tease the completists, much as we love ‘em. Partly for art – Alex may try to convince you that he’s making a serious point about narrative choice. Mostly, I think, we did it because it was funny.

[The House of Chimes will open tomorrow, at an hour to be determined]