Once I work through a few more videos, and this merch drop, I would like to make a large content update to my website.

While working on my "The Furnace" video, I can't help but feel like the lore of this place would be much more fun to discover on your own, instead of me streamlining it to the viewers. There is a lot more to tell than what I can present in a video.

So, I think in this next website update, it might be fun to include an interactive point-and-click game to explore the Furnace.

The idea:

It would be pre-rendered, featuring several locations. You would have a hub featuring a small map, where you can read info about the locations; each location could then be clicked on so you could click around the full pre-rendered image to get additional info.

There would be a few key items you need to collect to open a secret room, unlocking a character that would add additional information to your main hub database.

I don't think you would have a player character on screen, instead the game would be "first-person" (the game would be just the prerendered image, and you would click around the static scene, like old school flash exploration games)

The first dilemma:

What engine should I use? So many choices! I don't have too much experience in the more complex engines, but have used most of the beginner-friendly ones.

My top picks:

• HTML-based - I already have an idea of how I would do this, but it might be unnecessarily tedious. Would be built directly into the website, which is kind of cool.
• Flash/Animate/Wick - The most period-correct, can embed directly into the website. Might look the best, but I have zero experience with it, so it would require a lot of learning (which is cool!)

Other considerations:

• Ren'py - Beginner friendly, but its mostly for pure visual novels. Could be fun to do some trickery to get what I want out of it.
• Visualnovelmaker - I have RPGMaker experience, so maybe this would work? Haven't played any games from this engine though, so I don't know how far people have pushed it.
• Unity - Maybe the most freedom, but would require the most work (especially if i don't use the adventure creator toolkit)
• Godot - Seems like the gamedevs I know are loving this engine over Unity, but again, probably would require the most work.

My other considerations are listed lower because idk if they can be directly embedded into my website (besides Unity and Godot). If i go with those, it might be better to make it into a downloadable exe file. But I think that also takes away with the old-school feel of a browser based exploration game.

Anyways!

I will figure this out soon enough, but I thought it would be fun to get this out of my system. I won't be able to work on this for awhile anyways, so I wanted to get my ideas down before I forget them.