GitHub: https://github.com/nebulousmango/When-Yema-Unspooled

Document references:

• Game design doc: link
• Narrative document: link
• Flowcharts: link

Protagonist
Our protagonist is a young child named Yema, who’s spent all her life in a small, tightly-knit complex of homes at the edge of a small town. Yema has a restraint that she’s conscious of: it keeps her from straying too far from home. The player can decide what they think about Yema’s ‘tether’: whether it’s self-imposed or whether it’s being inflicted on her by somebody else.

On the day of the game’s story, Yema finds herself unexpectedly alone at home. On an impulse, Yema decides to take a long walk. She leaves without any preparation of any kind, and with no knowledge of what she’ll meet with outside. At first, Yema only hopes to explore the nearby rice fields and then return home before the others know she’s gone. After she hears about the sea, her dreams widen: the player can decide whether Yema’s final aim is to become entirely untethered, or just to spend a single day exploring and then to return to the security of home.

Setting
Yema's world is set in a time that resembles the late 1800s, and uses a mishmash of real-world influences. Some of the photographs and prints are from a 19th century Indian and Japanese setting, but there are other characteristics that don’t go together in the real world. Yema’s home uses Moroccan architecture meant for hot and dry desert climates. The red-winged starling is an African species that nests in cliffs and mountainous areas. The three puppets are represented by a photograph of a Singaporean puppet show, and both the pendants are photographs of 8th century Panamanian artefacts. So Yema’s world isn’t based on one specific real-world location or time period. The game’s setting is supposed to resemble a child’s perspective: like the anthropomorphism of the wildlife and the puppets, Yema’s vague grasp of geography and direction, and her short-sighted goals of moving from one area to the next and not having any bigger purpose beyond that.

Yema lives in a small town of about a hundred people. Outside the town’s limits are several miles of paddy fields, and past them are the plains. Past the plains is the sea, where there’s a small harbour with sail boats that fish for crabs and lobsters.

To the east past the rice fields is a crumbling stone temple from an earlier time: the temple used to be frequented by the rice farmers before it was abandoned for a different set of deities. The etchings in the stone have eroded from the wind and rain, and the inside is musty with bat droppings. North of the temple is a quiet and dense forest that’s easy to get lost in. The treetops grow close and dapple and throw the sunlight that passes through, which makes it difficult for Yema to tell which direction to move in. 

Encounters

• Barn owl: met in the rice fields. The barn owl is the first character Yema runs into. The owl spends its days living off the rats that populate the field. Like Yema, the owl has spent their whole life in the fields and only has a vague idea of what lies beyond. Nevertheless, they tell Yema about a sea somewhere in the west that they’ve heard about from other birds. Since the owl is the first character Yema meets, she assumes that they’re very knowledgeable and well-travelled. The owl uses many words and speaks very broadly to hide the fact that they can’t give Yema any substantial advice about what to do or which way to go.
• Red-winged starling: met at the ruins. Yema meets the starling while she roams around the ruins of an old stone temple she finds past the rice fields. The starling has made a home in a cranny amidst the stone blocks, and sees Yema as she stumbles around in the dark of the temple’s interior. This starling is something of a trickster: they rarely see other people, so they take every opportunity they can to play games with their unsuspecting visitors. The starling hears about Yema wanting to reach the sea and realises that she's lost, and tells her that she can go through the forest for a shortcut. The starling tells Yema this knowing that she’ll lose her way in the forest’s dense foliage. Yema can also meet the starling a second time, if she decides to take on the puppets’ request. She returns to steal three of the starling’s feathers, and depending on how vengeful she’s feeling she can either pick the feathers off the ground or sneak up on the bird and pull them off. When she startles the starling, they drop a small, golden pendant, one of the many trinkets that they had scavenged from the ruins. If Yema feels like she wants to add insult to injury, she can steal the pendant as well: the starling is very attached to its hoard of treasure, and becomes upset when it realises that the pendant is gone.
• Three puppets: met on the plains. The three puppets are a part of a travelling show that moves between the towns on the plains. At the time when Yema runs into them, they’re putting a performance on for a small audience of by the side of the path. The puppets are obviously controlled by people, but in Yema’s eyes it’s only the puppets that are sentient. They never speak to her directly, but as if they are still aware of her presence. The puppets are actually well-travelled, and they tell Yema about the docks at the sea, where there are boats that sail to faraway places that they’ve never seen. Under certain circumstances, the puppets also tell Yema that they can “extend” her tether so that she can complete her journey: they unwind thread from their costumes and tell Yema that they’ll give it to her in exchange for starling feathers to decorate their hats.
• Crab: met at the docks. Yema meets the crabs while walking along the shore. The crab is hiding from a group of children that want to catch and eat them, and they’re grateful when Yema chases the other children away. Yema tells the crab about her plight: about how she’s come all this way and seen so much, but she still feels tied to her home. If Yema has either the frog or lizard pendant and shares it with the crab, the Yema will use the pendant to cut Yema’s tether.

Story
See the narrative document for the complete script.