Sixteen days to go. Today I made yet another change to the opening sequence, to make it more dramatic, clearer, make the first task more obvious, and give a stronger start to the whole series.

It's funny really, of all the stories to choose to start this project, Les Miserables is possibly the hardest. That was part of the reason for choosing it - if I can make an adventure game based on Les Miserables, I can make an adventure game based on anything. Why is Les Miserables such a challenge? Well can you think of ANY other story ever that has a LESS dramatic start? The book begins with chapter after chapter about what a nice guy bishop Myriel is. Then the size of the book - it covers (from Valjean being imprisoned until his death) about forty years, and worse, even when Valjean is there the story is often about other people (Fantine, Marius, etc.) And the drama - the climax and ending are very UN-dramatic. The barricades fail, and there's not even any hand to hand fighting, and at the end, Valjean just dies in his bed and the people around him are upset and think it's so unfair. Really, the only power of the book comes from melodrama - from terrible things happening to people. But the nature of a game is the user would naturally try to STOP those things from happening. Cosette growing up at the Thenardiers, Valjean stealing the loaf, Valjean's attempts to escape, just about EVERY major event is something where the user would naturally do the opposite of what the book requires.

And finally, the length of the book, for a first ever game... simply getting the game in a reasonable playable state has been a major achievement.

So it makes me smile that I've chosen such an impossible task. and the good news is that after this it should be easy. Future games will be better in every way, now that I'm finally learning how to do it. This isn't intended to talk down the game Les Miserables - I think it's pretty awesome. But future games will be even awesomer.