As Dusk Falls Director Dissects The Interactive Drama [EXCLUSIVE]

Filled with a wonderful assortment of characters, each with their own distinct personality and goals, As Dusk Falls is a game you get sucked into. What is more fascinating is that the game is made as an experience to share. Using a phone app, you can play this game together with friends to share the burden of each massive decision. Between the depth of the game and this multiplayer setup, As Dusk Falls is a truly unique experience.

I recently had the opportunity to review As Dusk Falls before its release on PlayStation. The interactive drama follows the lives of 2 families over 30 years following a violent meeting in an Arizona motel. As the story unfolds, we make decisions, small and big, that shape the characters’ lives- a perfect example of how powerful branching narratives can be.

It left me with a lot of questions about how this team pulled it off. Caroline Marchal, CEO of INTERIOR/NIGHT & the Creative Director of As Dusk Falls, was kind enough to give me some answers in an exclusive Q&A for GamesHorizon.

What was the inspiration behind As Dusk Falls?

Caroline: I am a big fan of crime dramas like Breaking Bad or Fargo because they feature interesting characters and high stakes. An obvious movie reference is Dog Day Afternoon, with its fantastic pressure cooker setup.

Design-wise, the initial inspiration for As Dusk Falls came from Twitch Plays Pokemon in 2014. Watching a community trying to achieve a goal together with infights and fascinating daily minutes got me wondering: what is the narrative equivalent of that?

“Stories are better enjoyed when we share them, and everyone understands and engages with story.”

So, the design had to be inclusive, communal, and super approachable.

How did you go about creating the dynamics of each relationship to make each choice feel impactful?

Caroline: When we create characters, we look at their web of relationships and how their initial values align or oppose others’ around them. We make sure there is push and pull around them in terms of what each character wants.

“There are no bad guys in As Dusk Falls, at least from our point of view.”

But each character has a different flaw, a different perspective, and background/baggage, which in turn is a great engine for interesting choices.

The Holts are trying to get out of their money problem, and each member of the family has their idea on how to achieve that. This creates dilemmas for Jay, the playable character, and interesting situations.

In terms of choice design, we balance tentpole choices (marked as crossroads in the game, which create big story branches), and smaller choices that impact relationships or situations that sometimes pay off immediately, or sometimes much, much later.

How did you balance the choices to have them feel open while still constraining them? Did you have a framework for what would constitute a crossroads decision vs a regular decision that has an outcome?

Caroline: Our writing and design team are pretty experienced, so part of our process is organic. We “feel” it and we know what a good level of branching is without becoming an unbearable burden for production. We pay extra attention to callbacks and consequences of course, as they make the world and characters feel real.

“We don’t design by numbers or with hard metrics, because this is not how stories and people work.”

So, sometimes a choice has 2 possible options, and sometimes 4 or 5, depending on what is logical in context from the playable character’s perspective. But we have rules of thumb like “a choice/interaction every 20 seconds”, “between 3 and 5 tentpole choices per chapter,” and in general we also know that we will create double the content than what players can see in one playthrough.

Beyond that, we find play tests incredibly useful. They are invaluable to test if the choices are well balanced, if a branch is not seen, and why or if we missed an option players would want to express how they think and feel.

It’s impressive that so many little details carry over in the dialogue as it makes the story feel absolute. It was so hard to imagine that there was any other eventuality. How did you go about planning and balancing that?

Caroline: I think first of all it’s a testament to the talent of our writing team, who have been writing branching narratives for many, many years. We also did a lot of rewrites and fine-tuning of the dialogue – which has a prominent role in As Dusk Falls due to the story genre and our art style – to make sure characters always felt consistent/unique and had a memory. But above all that, I think the key is to test as much as possible: we do table reads with the entire team – and everyone provides thoughts and feedback – we do playtests, etc.

I like your comment about the story feeling absolute. I think that’s one of the great things with branching narrative: you need it to flow. And when it does, the branching becomes invisible, which is pretty hard to do!

But it is also a problem because players might question their agency. This is why we introduced outcome and crossroad UI as well as the story tree. We tried to make them non-invasive, but they’re a handwave to players to say: hey, this could have gone very differently.

What is the process of working with the voice actors to balance out such a vast branching story?

Caroline: Working with actors has been one of the best parts of the development of As Dusk Falls. I learned a ton and they brought so much to the quality of the final experience.

We shot live-action with actors over several years. We recorded the voice performance over 2 summers, across the UK and the US, with two very talented voice directors: Damien Goodwin and Keythe Farley. Some of the actors who did the visual performance also did the voice, and that made the work easier for them, I think.

We also recorded the game more like a drama than traditional game VO. We played video captures of the game for the actors, and we didn’t record line by line but in stretches of linear story sections. We always had the script and myself on sessions to explain the branching or the context. I think that helped a lot for consistency.

What was the most rewarding aspect of this project, and what would you do differently from a design perspective? What will you take forward to future projects?

Caroline: I am very proud of what we achieved with As Dusk Falls. It’s unique and bold AND a new IP. Not bad for a debut game. We also managed to assemble a great team of storytellers. We’re all passionate about interactive narrative and I think there is a lot more to explore with multiplayer and bridging this gap between the worlds of linear and non-linear screen entertainment.

“I am pretty convinced this is the future.”

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As Dusk Falls is available to play on PS5, PS4, Xbox, and PC through Steam, GOG, and Epic Games. To learn more about INTERIOR/NIGHT and see what they are up to, check out their website and socials (X, Instagram).