Frankie, So Long (Demo)

Frankie, So Long is dialogue-driven game about saying goodbye. Created by childhood friends Derek Smith (writing, narrative design) and Justin Majetich (programming, art, sound), a core motivation of the project was to develop an expressive dialogue system that could communicate the subtle slurry of nostalgia and nerves we ourselves experienced leaving our rural hometown years ago. We tackled this by embedding tags (speed, pause, and emotion) into the dialogue text which are then parsed and expressed through subtitle and sprite animation. Coupling the injection of these expressive cues with the actual writing process provides the writer a freedom to more directly express their vision.

The game art was hand-drawn using Blender’s Grease Pencil. This style felt intuitive and helps carry the theme of nostalgia.

We scoped the final project down to a demo, which only includes the first area and conversation of the game. However, core systems are in place, and expanding the game would be a matter of further asset creation.

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