A twine game about myself written over the course of three weeks.
The game takes the player through my memories to show how I view life: as something disorientating and dream-like, where events happen meaninglessly and yet have real emotional consequence, leaving me to wonder what they all mean to me.
Gameplay:
It's a traditional hypertext game where players click on words to make choices and continue the story. Often these choices make the story jump from one memory to another.
The game ends with a sequence that assigns one of four possible meanings to my life.
Design Details:
I used the second person to place the player in my perspective and create a parallel between the player finding meaning in the story to me finding meaning in life.
I wrote the links' anchor text say little about where they will lead, so that the player feels lost and the events of the story feel somewhat arbitrary.
I wrote the memories to be evocative and share a common sense of loss to give them emotional significance. This encourages the player to read the story as a collage with an overarching meaning and purpose.
I end the game with the player arriving on a meaning to my life and then waking up from their dream. Finding meaning creates closure by making sense of the entire story. But I relegate this finality to a dream and highlight a continuing real world where events will change how I understand my life.
