I have read through countless works from both ends of the spectrum – from mythology to science, Lovecraft to Shulgin. I am increasingly certain that these phenomena lie somewhere in a realm as yet unaccounted for: the strange place where fact and fiction meet, and a new reality comes into fruition.
Download Nestlings from ModDB
(Half-Life 2: Episode 2 required)
Nestlings is a short experiment in story and mood. It emerges from a task I set myself: to write, design and build a single-player mod in just three days.
It is not a perfect project, by any means. If it weren't for the self-imposed time limit, there are things I'd change. Maybe I will, someday.
A lengthy developer commentary, in which I talk about some of the design and narrative decisions I took for the mod, can be found here. Beware: spoilers lurk within.
Feedback is, of course, more than welcome.
.
Designed, written and built by Lewis Denby.
Music by Kevin McLeod, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
www.lewisdenby.com
www.incompetech.com
Articles
It's a few months now since I made Nestlings in three days. There's been less press coverage than there was with the first version of Post Script Ep 1 (by the way: exciting news on that coming soon...), which could be due to its right-before-Christmas release, or maybe its short length, or maybe because I just threw it online with zero fanfare.
Either way, I've been generally pleased with the response, and most people's criticisms have been exactly what I expected. There have been a couple of "it's too short" comments, which I can't really get behind - I'm really interested in short-form gaming and how it works. Other than that, though, I basically agree. There are a few bugs and glitches. The "picking up notes" thing is tired and illogical. The ending... well, that's a funny one. The ending seems to have been loved and hated pretty equally. For the record, I don't like the very end - it's too abrupt and, on my new PC, for some reason doesn't even fade out. But the bit before it I was pleased with. I'm glad to see a few people saying the same.
One thing I've been delighted with is people's response to the atmosphere. I had no idea I'd managed to create something that so many people have found truly frightening. I wasn't going for fear, really. I was going for a sort of morbid fascination, which by the end had transitioned properly into classical tragedy. But so many people have talked about feeling frightened as they walked around the house. That I've managed to evoke such a reaction (with the help of Kevin McLeod's fantastic Creative Commons-licensed music, it has to be said) is just wonderful.
I've only found a couple of reviews so far. Did you like Nestlings? Did you hate it? Do you write for a PC gaming website or similar? Review it! Go on! Anyway, the two I've found are both interesting. One because, well, it's on a website I'm editor of. Yeah. For the record though, the reviewer - Fraser McMillan - wrote it off his own back and I had no input whatsoever. So I'm delighted when he says of Nestlings: "Short-form games can exploit certain elements of design in unforeseen ways, and the very fact of Nestlings’ truncated length allows it to be one of the most consistently psychologically intense and potent gaming experiences I can think of. It’s utterly captivating from beginning to end."
The other is a short write-up from Danish website Half-Life Portal, which is more mixed. They've settled on a score of 65% (how you can put a 1-100 score on something which lasts 5 minutes is totally beyond me), claiming players shouldn't expect too much, but that it is still "a very atmospheric pure-story-mod... very well done from an artistic point of view."
Anyway, further to all this, PC Gamer UK got in touch with me a few weeks back and asked if they could put Nestlings on their cover disc. Well, of course they could! So if you're in good old Blighty and picking up a copy of this month's Gamer, released today, you'll find Nestlings on the attached DVD.
Recommend Nestlings to a friend! Recommend it to a reviewer! And keep checking the Internet for - fingers crossed - a bloody exciting announcement about what I'm doing next. Well, I'm excited, anyway...
Nestlings released
News 1 commentA short experiment in story and mood. The result of a task I set myself: to design, write and build a single-player mod in just three days.
Episode 63
Feature 10 commentsWilliam is alone this week because the recording was botched. He explains the situation and then goes through the week's news alone, it lasts for about...
Files
Nestlings
Full Version 3 commentsA short experiment in story and mood, built for Half-Life 2: Episode 2.
Post a comment
Profile
X
Tags
Embed Buttons
Link to Nestlings by selecting a button and using the embed code provided more...
Very interesting. A couple of technical notes that will help the mod appear more polished:
-the chapter title is wrong in nestlings/resource/nestlings_english.txt. Line 6 is "Nestlings" "Nestlings Chapter 1" but it should be changed to "nestlings_Chapter1_Title" "Nestlings Chapter 1". Then it will show up properly in game. But you don't need to use the chapter system at all, for a single map mod like this you should just change line 12 of the GameMenu.res to "command" "engine map nestlings1". That way "play" takes you straight to the map.
-You can clean up the scripts folder. Nearly all of what you've included is not needed in this game. Also remove materialsrc, save and screenshot directories prior to distribution (check against this list: Developer.valvesoftware.com ).
-You can use an env_hudhint Developer.valvesoftware.com to get the key bound to "use" for the intro training message. I'm not sure it's necessary though. If used at all I'd trigger it in the vicinity of the first note and leave it at that.
These aren't big issues, but they help. It's very good overall (within the limitations of a point and read experience).
Wow. This is some of the best atmosphere I've experienced in a mod. Okay, so yeah, there's basically zero "gameplay" in the most direct and specific sense, but this was an experience that would not have worked as well if it was simply a text document or even a video.
I'd say more, but that would risk spoiling the experience for everybody else reading this.
Well done!
I wouldn't say this mod is amazing, only because it lacks something more. But I must say, for an experiment, it's a very nice achievement. The mood is very nice and the lighting is very nice too. It feels lonely and abandoned into sadness.
The only things I didn't like were, the repeated texture on all walls and the handwriting. :D Had a bit of a hard time decoding that calligraphy.
I liked the overall feeling it gave me tho. Keep it up.
Gonna try this out.
Also, I didn't realize this was created by the developer of Post Script.
While the technical aspects were well done, I didn't really enjoy playing this mod. I don't really mind the lack of gameplay as much as the way in which the story was told (reading a page of diary in each room).
I like the "spooky house" idea a lot, you may want to go further in that direction. For example, add noises in the background, doors opening/closing, lights going on an and off, objects appearing/fading/moving. This would have made the experience more interesting for me.
Another idea would be to have "Carousel"-style frozen scenes in the rooms, which would go well with the non-linearity.
I absolutely agree with you about the way the story was told. I go into quite a bit of detail about that in the dev commentary linked above. Will certainly have a think about improvements in that respect.
Now this was a little bit special.
I thought the mod was very well done. I really liked the notes. And the ending did sorta spook me. Great job for three days of work!
Sure, it was short, but nonetheless, very well-done. The music was beautiful, the notes interesting (and some even a little creepy), and the atmosphere just mildly tense, which I think was perfect. The ending wasn't anything action-packed, but still gave me a spook. Great work, and I hope you decide to make more content in the future. :)
Ugh, a 5 minute map does not a mod make. I'm getting tired of these pretentious mods where you walk around and do nothing besides read notes and listen to audio blurbs.
At least give us some puzzles to solve or some exposition through something besides notes (intro cutscene?).
You might be interested to read the developer commentary linked above to find out why things are the way they are. It's five minutes long because it had to be made in three days. And I talk about the idea of using game engines to tell stories in a way not usually associated with games.
I agree that the reading notes system is conceptually flawed, though, for various reasons. It's something I'd like to return to and brush up if I had a brainwave in the future.
Thanks for playing, all! And Merry Christmas!