Artists Statement:
My goal for this game was to emulate a snippet in the life a person that is observing a situation from the outside in. They are a child looking in on a situation that is familiar to themselves from their bedroom window.
I wanted to explore the ideas of sympathy and pain. The child is looking in on a situation that they remember going through and is unsure of how to follow suit. They do not know the stranger that lies in the room across the yard from them.
It was deeply inspired by some of the games we talked about in class. Depression Quest and The Path helped inspire this game. I wanted to explore narrative as game and also tell a story poetically. I wanted to test the boundaries of what is a game and what isn’t a game. Depression Quest stood out to me because of its simple game play, it inspired me to attempt to do a text based game.
I hope to be able to add more chapters to this game as I progress in my game design career. This completes only one chapter in a story that will continue to bloom.
If I were to place it on Schrank’s avant garde table: I would say my game falls somewhere in the middle of Radical Political,The game allowed players some interaction, but most of it was an experience and it was all about the game and its story.
Documentation:
I had multiple people play this small twine game. I received multiple reactions. The game is simple and straightforward. It provides moments for choices but ultimately it is a chapter that will unfold later. Some argued that it wasn’t a game because of its lack of interaction, some enjoyed the poetic verses, some just stared at the screen and mumbled some words.
The Game:
(I will email you the game, as it won’t allow me to post it here)
Do not try to open in Google Drive. (It will appear as just text, we want it to look like an actual game). Instead download to your computer and open using a browser. This has been tested with Google chrome and should work for Firefox as well.