A Chill Adventure

Go on a journey on a snowy island to find your way home. Meet furry animals along the way, win competitions, and answer questions and you will find your destiny!

Artist Statement

Using Jenkin’s definitions for narrative structure through game design, I decided to integrate an embedded narrative into my gameplay, in which players are to explore the given environment of both Twine and the world of Wanderhome that I built. Using my playgroup’s Wanderhome gameplay as a foundation as well as my group’s zine, I created a series of miniature games within the larger context of the world and based my narrative structure for A Chill Adventure upon that. Influenced by Slade’s integration of player agency, I wanted my game to include choices that seemingly allowed alternate endings, yet also permitted players to be able to embark on a journey with a possible ‘happy ending’. Furthermore, I was influenced by Vonnegut’s perspective on story structure and wanted my players to be able to face a series of challenges to reach a satisfactory ending. Unlike Microscope and following Carse’s definition of finite gameplay, I wanted players to be able to finish the game reaching a sense of achievement by winning. However, they were given the option to ‘give up’ if they chose not to play anymore, creating boundaries and limitations within the world I created for the game. 

Although players cannot fully dictate their outcome with completely open rules and mechanics, interaction through Twine forces players to explore the given world and construct a narrative from it. Their choices can lead them to failure or they have opportunities to replay for a better outcome if they so choose. Through immersion in the given world and narrative somewhat precomposed for the player to discover juxtaposed with their player agency, the game serves as an example of interactive fiction. Although it has limitations, A Chill Adventure is interactive to the extent of immersion in an alternate world, investigation of an embedded narrative structure, and play regarding player agency and decision-making.

I also want to note that I included several images, many of which were hand-drawn and ran as file paths on my computer and no longer show once uploaded to itch.io. Please note they are linked here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AjaIvAVghy9OmUdXW0mR8sKYVHmjwekQ?usp=sharing

Footnotes:

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, 2018.

Carse, James P. Finite and infinite games. New York, NY: The Free Press, 2013.

Edwards, Ron. “GNS and Other Matters of Role-Playing Theory.” The Forge, October 14, 2014. http://indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/.

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture ’ Electronic Book Review.” electronic book review ’ Digital Futures of Literature, theory, criticism, and the arts, July 17, 2021. https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/game-design-as-narrative-architecture/.

Shape of Stories. YouTube, 2010.

Vandermeer, Jeff. WONDERBOOK. New York, NY: ABRAMS, 2013.