Author: Dawn

Weird and eerie interactive fiction

Dawn

In The Weird and the Eerie, critic Mark Fisher explores the sense of something’s being simultaneously unsettling and fascinating. “Weird” and “eerie,” according to Fisher, are the feelings you get when, in World on a Wire, Stiller realizes that what he thought was the “real world” is actually a simulation controlled by a “realer” world;… Continue reading Weird and eerie interactive fiction

New games: Food truck in the Garden of Earthly Delights (and two other Alone hacks)

Dawn

I've just finished my first three solo RPGs: Food Truck in the Garden of Earthly Delights (and two other Alone hacks). They are solo journaling games about cooking for demons, speedrunning your dreams, and the wrestling with the moon. They are all  hacks of Takuma Okada’s Alone Among the Stars, and were created for the… Continue reading New games: Food truck in the Garden of Earthly Delights (and two other Alone hacks)

Is Bitsy interactive fiction?

Dawn

from madotsuki’s closet by Bagenzo Bitsy, a tool created by adam le doux, is a “little editor for little games or worlds.” Earlier this year, a question arose on intfiction.org about whether games created with Bitsy could be considered interactive fiction. The question originated in part from data about how developers classify their own games:… Continue reading Is Bitsy interactive fiction?

Making Phenomena

Dawn

Phenomena began, like most creative things I do, with my favorite obsession/puzzle, the film Last Year at Marienbad. I was reading articles from BAMPFA’s CineFiles database, and came across this passage from an analysis by Freddy Sweet: "The key to understanding Marienbad is the realization that the very structure of the film is consciously designed… Continue reading Making Phenomena

There are robots in this rabbit hole, also interactive fiction

Dawn

As part of a new project I'm working on, I’ve been exploring the structure of Last Year at Marienbad and The Invention of Morel in terms of a branching narrative--or perhaps more accurately, a kind of fractured narrative. I hope to write more about that later. But first, I wanted to do a little bit… Continue reading There are robots in this rabbit hole, also interactive fiction

A Clock in its walls

Dawn

Source: https://lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2015/12/meet-me-in-st-louis-1944.html My annual Christmas re-watching of Meet Me in St. Louis, coupled with, well, all of 2020, has gotten me thinking a lot about time, and the way that the passage of time is both communicated and experienced in choice-based interactive fiction (for a great discussion of time in parser games, see this). Specifically,… Continue reading A Clock in its walls

My favorite Bitsy games

Dawn

I am fortunate to be employed and able to work from home. Since our shutdown began in late March, I’ve spent my weekends looking at prepper-adjacent product reviews (backpacks, camping percolators) on the internet, and trying to learn Bitsy (Adam Le Doux’s “little editor for little games or worlds”) by making small Bitsy games. I’ve… Continue reading My favorite Bitsy games