Quality Control

ROUGH LAYOUT - NEEDS TIDYING

  1. Check for typos! A browser with a built-in spellchecker (like Chrome) is helpful.
  2. Keep up-to-date quality notes on all qualities. Specify story effects, value (for tradable qualities) and how the quality can change.
  3. Review your content and specifically look at each quality requirement and effect:
    • When spending a resource, double-check effect is correct.
    • Remove gratuitous quality requirements and effects. They add complexity.
    • Be extra careful with any quality changes that use Set To Exactly. It can be Satan.
  4. Look at the content from the player’s point of view, including:
    • Make sure all unfamiliar terms are glossed so they're clear.
    • Make sure if your game has a To Be Continued break while you write more content, that it's clearly signposted to the player.
    • Make sure if they have to wait for an opportunity, change area etc., there’s a clear note.
    • You can put text in square brackets to make it render in red italics in the game - this is useful for giving out-of-fiction explanatory notes.
    • Make sure people know when the next sweetie (secret, quality bump, plot point) is coming.
  5. Playtest all content. As well as dedicated playtesting sessions, playtest each chunk of content as you go, correct typos and quality errors using the live editing function.
  6. If text is longer than a sentence in a branch or a paragraph in a root or result, try to trim it.
  7. Check headlines are pithy and appropriate. Make sure they’re not identical to any other headline (unless you don’t want players to tell them apart) - meaningful headlines make it easier for you to navigate content too.
  8. Double-check content is in the right area and setting. It's easy to miss this. Make sure Key of Dreams and Impossible! quality requirements keeping content from going live.
  9. Did you just OK the word ‘strange’? Are you sure you meant to do that? What does it add?

Add in a point about getting someone else to sub-edit for you

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