While playing howling dogs and Destroy/Wait I realised that I saw a similar theme in those two ‘games’ as I did in most of the other IF we have seen, played and discussed. They all have some dark, mysterious and (Technologically) futuristic aspect to them. Whether it is the pitch black backgrounds with the brightly colored fonts or the snippets of photographs and drawing (like we saw in My Boyfriend Came Back from War, My Body – A Wunderkammer  or even Uncle Roger) or even the actual content itself, they all discuss a weirdly dark, unknown and even uncomfortable situations and circumstances that remind you of some sort of sci-fi thriller.

In Emily Short’s review of the howling dogs, she explains how Twine is often experienced or referred to as a CYOA book. I realized that the Return to the Cave of Time (1985) by Edward Packard, which is the book I read for our project, had a very similar pattern – any mentioned of the future and the whole plot became weirdly dark, strange and extremely futuristic. What I mean by “extremely futuristic” is the fact that any time I had to ‘time-travel’ to the future it never lead to something ‘simple’ like a flying car or a super high tech phone, but rather I would find ‘myself’ in a fully blown out production of humans living on different planets, in special egg capsules, living of off tubes connected to who knows what and swimming is some sort of special liquid to survive. Similarly, these IF game narratives describe circumstances where it is never really clear exactly what is going on. The rooms you are found in are never lit enough, survival is crucial; for some reason you never have enough energy and you usually lack water, nutrients and food, oh and weapons or spooky clue that have been left-behind are always an added bonus. 

I wanted to connect this with the thought that IF started appearing during a time were technology and computers also started gaining more and more fame and the realisation that they can be something so much more than we had ever imagined. The combination of all the aforementioned definitely reminded me of dystopian worlds presented in Fahrenheit 451 by Red Bradbury or Neuromancer by William Gibson, where worlds of the past and the future create hazardous worlds where culture is based of off the old/ancient while using the new. In this situation IF has been able to combine the existence of a narrative or a story traditionally found in hand-held books or other form of print with the rise of high-tech technology (computers, AI, VR, etc.) that is so transcendent, it has been able to be depicted in the actual IF narratives themselves. The fact that authors, artists and creators no longer need to be ‘confined’ or ‘restricted’ in a limited space (of a traditional book bind), has allowed them to create pieces where they are easily able to get away with providing only fragments of a story, give limited context and make it completely spooky and dark. However, they are also encouraged to connected it with futuristic elements because of the fact that the reader/player is not longer confined to follow actual page but can click away to any link, page, image, or sound that is connected to the plot itself. Changing the definition of “narrative” also changed its context and possibly its meaning and its goal.

In Porpentine’s howling dogs, the idea of form mirroring content is present in the recurring scene of the room. After any plot occurs, you are always placed back in the same room with the exact same options. Similar to how a person in a hospital or prison is subjected to the same routine everyday, playing through this game you are forced to eat and drink before entering the activity room just as the character in the story has done for the past 360+ days. This fact highlights the idea of grasp mentioned in Sam Ashwell’s “A Bestiary of Player Agency”. This rule isn’t obvious right from the beginning. However, by the second day in the game, I knew to immediately go to the nutrient dispensers before doing anything else. In addition, the images that appear once the visor is used simulate what the character sees when they ingest the fluids.

The use of this game layout works to place you in the character’s position. I was surprised the first time I tried to get more food and was met by the abrupt message that I had reached my rations for the day. The fact that the game allows you to click on the link knowing the action is no longer available contributes to the empathy one feels for the character when playing. I’m sure the feeling I had when I was denied was similar to how the character felt the first time they were hungry and tried for more food but couldn’t get any. This game layout and lack of areas to physically explore also create a sense of confinement. While there is the sanity room, and activity room, and a bathroom, there is no mention of any external doors to lead elsewhere. This is evident in the fact that all actions return you to the same room. This limits the exploratory agency and agency of possibility that we’ve seen in other types of digital literature such as interactive fiction and hypertext.

At the same time, the virtual world represents the opposite of confinement. It represents a world where you are in control of the narrative. It can act as an escape from the real world around you. This could be why the time in the virtual world grows longer and longer as the days go by. As the character continues to experience this alternate world, they want the experience to last as long as possible as a way of escaping their reality. When Porpentine wrote this piece, she had just started hormone replacement therapy. Her experiences during this process probably manifested themselves in the escapism seen in this game. While not explicitly stated, the idea that the virtual world is more pleasant than reality is evident throughout the game.

The one aspect I questioned was the importance of the “{*}” that appears right before sleeping and right after consuming the fluid to enter the virtual space. I imagine this placeholder before entering and exiting this virtual world exists to represent the barrier between the real and imaginary. Since the game ends with you being unsure what world you’re in, I would assume it would end without the “{*}”. However clicking the last “{*}” brings you to a blank screen which I figured was intentional before the last quote comes up. Never going to sleep then waking up leaves you in a state of limbo where nothing is certain and you feel lost and confused, feelings that probably led you to want to escape in the first place.

While playing Destroy/Wait, I was confused at the initial goal of the game. I didn’t totally process what was going on with the initial noun and the choice to destroy or wait. What was I destroying or what was I waiting to do? Eventually, I figured out what was going on after pressing wait a couple times in a row. I found it interesting how it started off with physical things to decide on, such as cities or trees, but then moved to love and then eventually yourself. I played this game a couple of times and was interested if there were numerous outcomes, like some CYOA, but it seemed that the game always ended in the world ending with nothing left, which I found intriguing, yet dark. It seemed like there was an inevitable end to everything as even if you waited to destroy something, you were just prolonging the end of it anyways.

The second game, Howling Dogs, was even more dark. It seems like every time you enter the activity room, darker and darker “dreams” occur from strangling someone to death, to eating someone alive, to even being burnt alive. This game was a little hard to navigate in the beginning but I found it interesting to keep playing the game to see what the next “dream” may be, however dark it may have been.

I found it interesting as well how other people, like myself, found the game confusing, yet cool and kept them playing, like Emily Short cited. Being a hyper-text game, she found that this one was one that kept her thinking, which I agreed. I wondered, why were there so many different realities for this person to explore and what were they escaping from? It almost seemed like the person was using these dreams as a way to distract from sort of inner trauma, as the dreams they were interacting with were extremely dark and graphic. To me, it could almost be a sort of prison-like sentence, where someone is sent to spend the rest of their life living out other horrific acts and events. This made me think of Ashwell’s thoughts when he talked about protagonism as a way to drive player agency. In every dream, the player becomes a “new” protagonist and is the center of attention within that event, or at least their actions contributed to the story.

One thing that I questioned was why Howling Dogs had limited choice in the actions that you could take within the narrative. Salter talked about how games that had limited choice tended to increase user empathy. Were we supposed to feel empathy for the main character that is stuck experiencing all these dreams/VR interactions? Additionally, I felt it interesting to have such little choice for the user. If empathy was not the goal, was limited choice more of a style choice? I came away from this game with more questions than answers.

You would think that what every game wants is to get you to keep playing it. The more hours you log, points you gain, achievements you earn, and money you spend (if micro-transactions are involved), the better for its creator. If you play to the end, assuming there even is one, then play it again. It’s a win-win situation—the creator gets acclaim and you get to have some release from the stresses of the real world.

Yet some games will tell you that there is no happiness to be found inside of them. These games include “howling dogs” by Porpentine and “SPY INTRIGUE” by furkle.

During each day that passes in “howling dogs,” you must complete a series of menial tasks before you can indulge in the activity room. You are made to shower, eat a nutrient bar, drink a bottle of water, and maybe clean up your trash if you feel up to it. These tasks are important to your upkeep, of course, but they’re monotonous, repetitive. They aren’t nearly as interesting as the activity room, which lets you participate in vivid scenarios that vary in setting and role each day. Later in the game, the shower won’t turn on, the hydration unit fails to deliver cold water, and the trash disposal ceases to operate. Your skin itches and trash piles up on your floor. Even the sanity room begins to break down, signifying that your deterioration is mental as well as physical. This is all the more reason for you to retreat to the lavish fantasies of your activity room, up until you lose your very sense of self in the game’s most common ending.

“SPY INTRIGUE” gives a similar commentary about the allures and dangers of escapism. It has a clunky interface reminiscent of an outdated computer, featuring text in all caps and a choice map that lets you anticipate which options let you progress and which lead to dead ends. On the surface, the game is a ridiculous spy adventure that is impossible to take seriously. Whenever you die, however, the screen fades into a flashback sequence typed in all lowercase. These sequences give keen insight into the descent of the character’s real life, including drug abuse, traumatic memories, and mental illness. It’s as if in the interval between their game character dying and the game reloading to its last checkpoint, the player character is forced to sit alone with their dark thoughts and impulses. Then the game reverts back to its chirpy spy antics. Where the player in “howling dogs” wants to rush to the activity room as soon as possible, though, the player in “SPY INTRIGUE” wants to guide their character to the supposed dead ends in order to learn more about them. The more you die in the game, the more you revisit your life. It isn’t as fun—it’s pretty heart-wrenching, actually—but in the end, it’s the better option.

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.