interactive epistolary – Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling

Tentacles Growing Everywhere is the story of three young tentacled aliens who are just transitioning into their lifeform’s version of puberty.

The primary mechanic is one of editing posts: each of the three protagonists keeps a blog, and you’re in the role of helping them write, sometimes deciding what to take out and what to leave in place — which puts this story in perhaps a very small genre with a few other interactive epistolary pieces. I happen to be quite fond of this form, which explores both what someone is thinking and what they’re willing to write down about their thoughts, and Tentacles uses it to good effect as the characters fuss over how their friends might interpret their adventures, whether it’s a good idea to give one another advice, and so on.

These interactive passages are interspersed with excerpts from a “helpful” guidebook to puberty, written in the same faux-casual voice so often employed for this purpose. Here’s its guidance about being bullied:

Overall the story is pretty linear: there are some choices to make, but I don’t have the impression that they have more than a local effect on the story (if there’s major branching available, I missed that fact). Even so, there’s a fair bit of text here — 77 pages, with your current page number clearly visible as you play. It’s a novella-sized interactive read, with each protagonist having their own plot arc, though they have a fair amount of interplay as well.

Continue reading “Tentacles Growing Everywhere (Squinky)”

Someone recently asked me about games in which the player is involved in the story as a co-author rather than as a protagonist, and this is the list I came up with (plus a few others that I thought of after answering the initial request):

Witch’s Yarn — a graphical point-and-click rather than text-based, but you’re picking which props/characters you want to bring on stage next. Eons ago I did a review of it here. I think there are interesting procedural narrative things they could have done with this premise, but mostly in practice it came out as a series of puzzles instead. (Still interesting and unusual, though.)

18 Cadence — players rearrange objects and narrative elements to construct their own stories. I talk about it more here.

Continue reading “Games of Co-Authorship”