I wanted to experiment with a few different forms of media for my final. As we were getting into the concept of a labyrinth and how it relates to the repetition of time, I thought that the form of a text adventure game would demonstrate these ideas perfectly. To emulate the effects of a text adventure game, I used Microsoft Word and video capturing software to record my typing and subsequently the text that I copied-and-pasted from another document. This became the interface between the user of the game and the computer / narrator of the game. I then began a playthrough of the "game." In the first run, I make a lot of bad choices, choices that would have negative consequences in the real world, and so that translated to the game. Each bad choice I made would lead to a subsequent event / conflict, and with enough bad choices, you lose the game, meaning that you failed to rescue the princess you promised to save. At first, I seem reluctant to play the game, but the story (Around 2000 words of text) draws me in, and I decide to restart the game and play it through. This time, I learn from my mistakes and seemingly make all the right choices, and the events are completely different than the first playthrough. Still, though, in the end, the princess dies, and the ending screen shows me attempting to restart the game for yet another run.
I also put an indie rock song that I synced with the video to help make it more engaging. I also sped up the gameplay to over 150% than the speed at which it actually occurred, to give it a brisk, game-like pace.
I enjoy writing fiction, and while this story is as stereotypical and archetypical as it gets, I still had fun writing it, and it's definitely a medium that I never thought about working with before (A video of text). It was a pretty unique project, and it's a piece that I would put in my portfolio for its concepts as an art piece as well as to present the writing itself.
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