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Solo Queue: An Exercise in Serenity

Programming, Video Games

This weekend I committed to finishing a small Twine game I’ve been dabbling with intermittently for the last year. It may seem a little esoteric (and rather silly) if you’re unfamiliar with the game genre being parodied, but hopefully it’ll still convey the general idea.

You can play it directly in your browser by clicking the title below:

Solo Queue: An Exercise in Serenity

Solo Queue is inspired by Dan Bruno’s Time for some Fire Emblem and Alex Austin’s Bioshoot Infinite + 1. I was intrigued by the notion of abstracting a game’s core mechanics into Twine as a form of critique. I wanted to apply the same approach to the lords management game (a.k.a. MOBA) I play most regularly: League of Legends.

While I was fiddling with Twine, I was also working (and eventually had some success) at climbing the season 3 ranked ladder in solo queue. There is a certain inherent insanity in attempting teamwork with four complete strangers. To quote Reservoir Dogs:

Mr. Pink: Why can’t we pick our own colours?

Joe: No way, no way. Tried it once, doesn’t work. You got four guys all fighting over who’s gonna be Mr. Black, but they don’t know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way. I pick. You’re Mr. Pink.

Succeeding in solo queue requires diplomacy, flexibility and ego management. Ultimately, it’s a lesson in serenity; you must accept that you are going to lose many games regardless of your personal performance or skill.

Solo Queue in Twine

As I’ve indicated previously, I had some troubles working with Twine. In fact, halfway through development I moved the passages to a plain text file and began compiling them directly with twee. I also wanted to avoid mixing JavaScript code with story content, so I stored the macros in separate files and wrote a few quick Perl scripts to append them together at build time. The workflow worked quite well once I’d set all that up; I especially enjoyed being able to easily import Leon Arnott’s excellent Twine macros.

It felt great to work on a hobby game again, though I’d like to attempt something with more systemic mechanics for my next side project. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my preposterous little game, and to all the League players: best of luck in season 4!

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One Response to “Solo Queue: An Exercise in Serenity”

  1. Matt Warren Says:
    March 13th, 2014 at 11:11 am

    Matt, that was awesome. I played LoL just long enough to get and appreciate your creation. I loathe League. Re: Playerbase, it was akin to Counterstrike. Plus I was unwilling to sink massive chunks of time into Learning everything.

    Fortunately you came along and compressed the core experience into this nice Twine game. Including the damaging social interactions was a nice touch. :)

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