[game] Buried

gamingarchaeo

Hi all!

Made a twine game for the recent Heritage Jam (a competition for archaeologists to produce novel visualisations on a given theme, this year it was burial). The entry ended up winning the jam and lots of interest was generated about the twine media - so expect to see a few more of us archaeologist types round these parts in the coming months.

So the game itself has a ton of branches, endings and ending modifiers which are meant to let you explore burial through both an archaeological and personal lens. So yeah! Hopefully it's interesting to people outside of archaeology :x

Big thanks to everyone here and on the google groups who has been so helpful and inspiring. Still a long way to go to learn what is possible in twine, but yeah! Here it is - first go!

At the moment I have it hosted on my website as it was too big to put up on philome. Let me know if you want it on google drive or another form and I can try get it up.

http://taracopplestone.co.uk/buried.html

*warning the file is quite large and can take a while to load at first!*
*also warning I am an archaeologist not a writer so apologies for bad literature things in advance*
*final warning the time frame of the jam meant I didn't get to spell-check fully - sorry!*

Criticism and comments welcomed (no really. please. I want to learn.)

cmbalfonso

Honestly, I gave up waiting for it to load in the browser and just right-click downloaded it. The downloaded file ended up breaking at 1.45 MB and gave a "This passage does not exist: Start" error.

Tried again, halted at 2.18 MB.

How big is thing file, really? Could I please trouble you for a zip download instead?

Jubell

I waited for it to load and can see that you put a LOT of work into this. It's very stylish and has it's own tone, etc.

I didn't get to far, sadly because I think I chose...the wrong path? I decided to tidy up but ended up...bored? But I think if I worked in a more technical profession I would have been much more immersed in one was going on. In the end, it felt a bit too realistic (someone else wanting to organize books according to certain parameters? You don't really see that in many games, lol. At least not getting the chance to do so).

But perhaps I'll give it another try at another opportunity? I think it may be because I don't know what to anticipate as a player which made me trail off. Am I supposed to be doing something or sitting back and letting things slowly unfold? Is it something I want to watch unfold?

I still think it's great that you put so much work into it, so be proud. IF games can be hit and miss for some people because the content just might not entice every player.

gamingarchaeo

@Jubell - Yah totally understand all of that, very valid points! It was made for an archaeological / heritage jam so, basically, its a bunch of archaeologists making things for other archaeologists... It was made as a proof of concept of how IF could be used to explore more complex themes, rather than to necessarily be a "fun game" or "fun read". The whole idea is to make you, as an archaeological player, critically engage with how you think about and construct the discipline - which obviously won't hold too much appeal or even impact to people who don't spend their life tossing up the impact of processual vs postprocessual theoretical paradigms on processes of interpretation.

Going forward I would like to remake it so its more consumable for the general public as I really do think there is a lot that IF can do for engaging both academics and the public with not only the actual objects, times and people we deal with but also the bigger themes - but it would definitley seem like I have a lot to learn before I could start doing that properly :P

@cmbalfonso will update the original post later when I get back to my PC with a zip download! Sorry!