Reading
about Twine games, I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect when actually immersing
myself in the gameplay. According to the author, Laura Hudson, Twine is a
platform that allows independent game creators to express their not so
traditional or mainstream ideas for gameplay. These creators make games that
are shunned by the mainstream gaming community as unworthy of acknowledgement
as legitimate gaming experiences. Hudson comes to these creators’ defense and
talks about the gaming community demographic not matching up with what more
mainstream game creators expect and cater to. She talks about how the
population is less teenage boys than adult women and that these folks seem to
be more receptive to what independent game creators such as Porpentine put out
on Twine. Porpentine created two of the games I played: Begscape and Howling
Dog.
about Twine games, I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect when actually immersing
myself in the gameplay. According to the author, Laura Hudson, Twine is a
platform that allows independent game creators to express their not so
traditional or mainstream ideas for gameplay. These creators make games that
are shunned by the mainstream gaming community as unworthy of acknowledgement
as legitimate gaming experiences. Hudson comes to these creators’ defense and
talks about the gaming community demographic not matching up with what more
mainstream game creators expect and cater to. She talks about how the
population is less teenage boys than adult women and that these folks seem to
be more receptive to what independent game creators such as Porpentine put out
on Twine. Porpentine created two of the games I played: Begscape and Howling
Dog.
Upon actually playing a Twine game,
I felt like I was transported back to the earlier days of the internet when
webpages tended to be much more text centric because of lower bandwidths. The
text-based nature of Twine games immediately inspired a sense of nostalgia in
me and I felt a connection right away. I have also always been an avid reader
and one of the things I enjoy most about reading is that as the reader, I have
the privilege of conjuring my own imagined version of the authors description
of a scene or setting. Instead of seeing the same images that any other player
of the game would see, with a Twine game, I was allowed to imagine the scenes
of the story myself. In Begscape, I played as a homeless person wandering from
town to town, begging for enough coins to afford shelter for the night so that
I could stay alive to beg again the next day. Images are loaded with emotional
meaning and because I was not shown how to feel, I was able to connect with the
character more than I might have been able if I were shown the character in an
image. Being show an image of the character would have distanced me from them,
but this way, I could really BE them in the game. I felt sad, hopeless, and
even desperate as I played the game three times to try and survive just a bit
longer each time. Every time my fate was decided by others and it was by chance
that each passerby might have pity for me and drop a coin, simply ignore me, or
walk past me with disdain.
I felt like I was transported back to the earlier days of the internet when
webpages tended to be much more text centric because of lower bandwidths. The
text-based nature of Twine games immediately inspired a sense of nostalgia in
me and I felt a connection right away. I have also always been an avid reader
and one of the things I enjoy most about reading is that as the reader, I have
the privilege of conjuring my own imagined version of the authors description
of a scene or setting. Instead of seeing the same images that any other player
of the game would see, with a Twine game, I was allowed to imagine the scenes
of the story myself. In Begscape, I played as a homeless person wandering from
town to town, begging for enough coins to afford shelter for the night so that
I could stay alive to beg again the next day. Images are loaded with emotional
meaning and because I was not shown how to feel, I was able to connect with the
character more than I might have been able if I were shown the character in an
image. Being show an image of the character would have distanced me from them,
but this way, I could really BE them in the game. I felt sad, hopeless, and
even desperate as I played the game three times to try and survive just a bit
longer each time. Every time my fate was decided by others and it was by chance
that each passerby might have pity for me and drop a coin, simply ignore me, or
walk past me with disdain.
When I played Howling Dog, I was
impressed with how different another Twine game could be even though the style
and color scheme were basically identical. I played another game by Anna
Anthropy called Queers in Love at the End of the World, a game lasting only 10
seconds, and came away with the same impression. I appreciate having been
introduced to this medium for game distribution because these Twine games have a
much more interesting style of gameplay to me compared to anything coming out
of mainstream companies. I really liked the gameplay of the Twine games: a sort
of interactive storytelling with a very personal feel. I plan to play through
more of Howling Dog to find out about my mysterious past as the character in a
dark metal room.
impressed with how different another Twine game could be even though the style
and color scheme were basically identical. I played another game by Anna
Anthropy called Queers in Love at the End of the World, a game lasting only 10
seconds, and came away with the same impression. I appreciate having been
introduced to this medium for game distribution because these Twine games have a
much more interesting style of gameplay to me compared to anything coming out
of mainstream companies. I really liked the gameplay of the Twine games: a sort
of interactive storytelling with a very personal feel. I plan to play through
more of Howling Dog to find out about my mysterious past as the character in a
dark metal room.