For this project I used 'Oblique Strategies' a deck of cards designed to promote creativity made by artist Peter Schmidt and artist and musician Brian Eno in 1975.

The digital version of these cards can be found here.

Remember those quiet evenings

I used this strategy by trying to make the general feel of the game calmer. Since I chose to write horror. I tried to choose a more subtle approach to the genre. I remembered quiet evenings I've spent looking through photos and mementos and tried to emulate that feeling, and then from there escalate to the dramatic scenes.

Only a part not a whole

I tend to do a lot of world-building when writing, and then I feel pressured to include the whole worldview and all of the details in the narrative, so using this strategy I tried to focus on limiting my storyview to a smaller amount of detail and keep my narrative limited to a smaller part of a larger world.

Do the words need changing?

This one initially felt obvious, but I ended up implementing it fairly easily. I sometimes get tunnel-visioned with the use of specific words. Whether it's because I like the way specific words sound or I like the phrasing, it's hard to remember that when I do get tunnel-visioned I can just scrap the word choice and start over.

Don't stress one thing more than another

I found this useful to remember to give importance to each aspect of the narrative. I think with horror specifically it can be very easy to only stress the horror parts of the story, when the rest of it can matter just as much.

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

In trying to convey the horror of the situation I was depicting, I found myself relying on detail by mechanizing the horror of the situation, i.e., guiding the player through the content and being explicit about what is supposed to be scary. I tried to change this by leaving the horror to the narrative and the art, so those aspects unsettle the player instead.