Today we were tasked to read “A Bestiary of Player Agency” by Sam Kabo Ashwell, as well as play “howling dogs” by Porpentine, “Destroy / Wait” by Chevalier, and “Spy Intrigue” by Furkle. All of these were interesting to play and read about. That being said, playing these games at some point made me want to pick up my laptop and throw it out of the closest window. “Spy Intrigue” and “howling dogs” were so long, and the actions the player had to do were so confusing at times that I almost raged quit a text-based game. Luckily I didn’t, and my laptop is still in one piece.
So the easiest (and less stressful) part of today’s assignment was playing “Destroy / Wait.” This game was fantastic since it was so simple to follow, with there being only two options throughout the entirety of the game. The player can either “Destroy” something like love or trees, or the player can “Wait,” which adds to the story. At some point, clicking “Wait” doesn’t become an option for the player; they have to “Destroy” the world. This is the case for every choice the player gets in this game leading to one end, the destruction of the player. Making it my favorite twine game ever, due to its simplicity to keep up with the story. Now tying this into the reading for today was tricky since it’s such a simple game compared to the other ones we’ve played. However, I believe that when Ashwell talks about the reflective agency, his description best fits what’s happening in the game. Every time a player selects to wait, the screen changes to say something new, but at the end of it all, choosing to remain doesn’t affect the game at all. You learn about the player’s life and regrets.
Now, the other two games took so long to complete and took a while to figure out how to win. “Spy Intrigue” supposedly had a tree showing all the paths you can take in the bottom right corner. It took me until the end to figure that out. “howling dogs” was also tricky since there was no map, and you had to find the right combination of choices until reaching a critical point in the story. These games had examples of big decisions as talked about by Ashwell. “howling dogs” also presents challenges where you must take an absolute path to reach the next story point. I do believe these games are similar when it comes to player agency, but a big difference between the two is that “Spy Intrigue” presents a sense of completionism. Seeing as the game remembers the nodes that the player goes to by marking them yellow. Once the player makes every node turn yellow then that’s how they’d know the game is over. The last thing I want to say is a question that I thought of when playing “howling dogs”. How do you figure out which word leads to the correct ending? I have a feeling that one of the words in the ballroom scene leads to a different ending, but how do you figure it out other than clicking every single word.