After completing our Choose Your Own Adventure project, I felt quite sad that this form of text has almost completely faded from society. I was very wrong; Choose Your Own Adventure books have not disappeared but rather evolved. As Salter points out in Playing for Empathy, Twine games are known for being “an open-source tool for telling interactive nonlinear stories”. Similar to Choose Your Own Adventure novels, Twine allows you to have an internal ontological experience with a given set of choices digitally.
Twine games have upgraded Choose Your Own Adventure Texts by increasing the exploratory nature of the story. In Twine games such as Cactus Blue Hotel and 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonald’s, the reader is encouraged to explore their settings and talk to other characters. In addition, the story is constantly evolving as the reader continues the story the options given change and adapt to reflect the past chosen taken by the reader. Another difference between Twine and choose your own adventure books is the complexity of the narrative. What makes many Twine games appealing are the heavy topics explored and the mystery surrounding the plot. Unlike Choose Your Own Adventure books, in many Twine games the reader is unaware of their mission. It is only as the game unfolds that the reader is able to understand the main character and their motives.
The beauty of Twine is that it combines the ease of Choose Your Own Adventure books and the exploratory nature of earlier interactive literature games. When playing games such as Shade, I found myself quickly disinterested as I continued typing commands the game could not understand. On the other hand, when playing a Twine game such as Cactus Blue Hotel I was so truly immersed in the game due to its ease of use. I was easily able to explore the hotel and talk to the guests with a click of a mouse. The choice of options rather than typing out commands made the game move quickly and feel truly immersive. While playing Cactus Blue Hotel, I felt emotionally stuck in the game. I could not physically stand up until I was able to make it out of the hotel. The greatly immersive experience provided by Twine games allows readers to easily understand and connect with the main character.
Work Cited:
Abigail Corfman, 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds (2016)
Anastasia Salter, “Playing at Empathy: Representing and Experiencing Emotional Growth Through Twine Games” (2016)
Andrew Plotkin, “Shade” (2000)
Astrid Dalmady, Cactus Blue Hotel (2016)