Livber: Smoke and Mirrors Narrative Log - The Initiation

Okay, alright. Livber... Livber has been a different kind of journey for me. An adventure that went to a different place than I expected and became a story that wrote itself (lies, everyone knows that stories can't write themselves!).

When we realized the journey we started for Kardiya (our first and most ambitious project) would take longer than we thought, we knew we had to put it aside for a while. Before we could present our million-dollar game idea to the industry and completely shatter the ecosystem with our awesome game, we needed to see the path forward. We needed a forerunner to light the way. That's where Lilith's story came in.

The foundations of Project Lilith (now known as Livber: Smoke and Mirrors) were laid during a long, eight-hour car ride with Osman. It wasn't supposed to be a huge project. It was meant to be a game we could finish quickly. Something we'd release on Steam, look back on with a small smile, and say, "Yeah, it was just a small experiment."

Things didn't go as planned. Lilith showed us she wasn't a character to be easily cast aside. It transformed from an eight-hour car ride into an awesome project that we worked on for six months through blood, sweat, and psychological warfare, and we enjoyed every bit of it.

Livber: Smoke and Mirrors' first commerical capsule art

So Lilith's story is basically a psychological thriller with some horror thrown in. Our ex who we thought was dead for five years sends us a letter (Silent Hill 2? Nope never heard of it) and says she's bringing "our creation" to life in our old house. The whole journey leads us to the house we meet Lilith and then we get dragged into madness over three chapters.

The narrative part of the game is finally done. Three acts, sixty-six thousand words, dozens of nodes hundreds of connections a handful of characters and even fewer punctuation marks... And my ass, back and wrist pains that went on for a whole month. I finally got to see the end of the game. It feels weird putting my name on something that's finished (I mean it's not out yet but still).

The whole narrative process for this game was... something else. It was a rollercoaster. At first it was a simple "siren" story. The protagonist chases the antagonist and maybe gets the ending he deserve.

But as I got deeper into it I realized that's not how Lilith would get her revenge. Because the Lilith I "knew" in real life wouldn't do that. She’d hit somewhere deeper more personal. And just like that I fell down the rabbit hole. I started pulling Lilith and basically every character after her from a super deep and personal place in my life. Clara became an allegory for a childhood I never got to live. Keenan for the words that were never said and just left to rot. Leigea for the guilt of doing things you know you shouldn't have. And Lilith, she became this weird damaging allegory of hate born from a toxic possessive love that just curdled.

The branching design for one the rooms in Livber: Smoke and Mirrors

So how well did I actually pull this off? Honestly not that great. Because there's a world of difference between having a theme and making it work. I started from a good place. I made Clara this modified Frankenstein's monster type. A young woman whose face and bones Lilith experimented on. Keenan became a talkative zombie chained up and missing his lower half. Leigea became the mother whose death we carry the guilt of. But while I dragged these characters into a cool allegory they just ended up as empty shells because I couldn't connect it all with the action. I just couldn't give them strong enough reasons to be who they were. Which made everything they said and did feel kind of empty. I couldn't get the characters (or allegories I guess) across to the player. It all just leads to the fact that the whole thing is hanging by a thread.

Then there's the whole marketing thing. The key hook was supposed to be: "A Disco-like Psychological Thriller and Horror Game."

But I know deep down this game has almost nothing in common with Disco Elysium. Sure the narrative has a style it's definitely mine. But Disco Elysium… that’s where we really drop the ball. It feels like what we're promising players and what we're actually giving them are two totally different things. Maybe I'll change my mind when I get the second and third chapters in front of me. (But probably not.)