# Overview

A PC-98 inspired adventure game, harkening back to early adventure VNs

As always, the LD entry page can be found here

# Design

One of the core tenants of any good monster game is to never show the monster. In Zermatt we go a bit further and don’t even describe it really. Using vague terms helps the reader fill in the blanks on their own; we tell you about it through the damage it leaves in its wake, not by how it looks.

The controls are very simple. There’s a map, but we never show it; the player has to figure it out. It’s fairly simple, but since the elevator is the “safe spot”, you need to be aware of where you are at all times.

We also introduce the scanner, which burns a “turn” but tells you where the monster is. This is crucial for planning and knowing when to return to safety.

The last major piece of the puzzle is audio design. When the monster is near, we add audio cues to drive up the tension. It all comes together very nicely.

The very simple art style also comes together nicely in being both fast for Kiri to draw, and effective in showing what it needs to show while leaving the player to fill in the blanks.

# Writing

I’ve done writing for jam games before, but Xermatt was the proving grounds for Butai, a tool I wrote specifically for doing narrative design.

I’d looked at other tools like Twine, but none of them did quite what I wanted. Butai combines simple dialogue blocks with high level logic, so you can build branching paths easily.

this was a huge improvement over previous games I’d written, and unlocked a lot more room to just write stuff. Everything was fairly easy to visualize and understand, as well as rapidly edit without causing unexpected problems.

This tool had some rough edges, but was a massive step in the right direction, so the replacement (First used in Xermatt Redux), carries forward a lot of the core design ideas.

# Play

The latest version can be found here