Citizens on the Mountaintop: The Story of the Civil War Amendments

tedc

Lovely new forum! I just posted the 1.0 version of my Twine game "Citizens on the Mountaintop: The Story of the Civil War Amendments." Advice and bug reports are still very much appreciated.

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/bf2qqjpljuqqpbf6ga8kfg/citizens-on-the-mountaintop-the-story-of-the-civil-war-amendments

It's a "message" game, I'm afraid. Hopefully you'll at least enjoy it if you already agree with me!

dacharya64

I really liked this piece. My favorite parts were definitely the beginning and the (minor spoiler) twist at the end. This piece pulled off an abrasive, satirical tone quire  well, and it was quite nice to see some of these contradictions and hints of the narrator's personality strewn throughout the piece (like the part about Lincoln's date of death).

Still, I thought the use of narrative structures in the story just became a little too over-the-top, past the point of "this is clearly exaggeration to prove a point in an ironic way" to "what am I playing; this is starting to slip from the bounds of history or even proving a point (ie  the beginning of Unit 6).

For a "message" piece either I agree with it a  lot already or you put your message across quite well. Having known little about the Citizens United case before this is definitely insightful. I think the strength of it, though, is with the argument of fact rather than libel-esque exaggerations and fictions--and this is sometimes played very effectively, sometimes hit-or-miss.

Overall, wow! Definitely worth a read.

tedc

Thank you! I'm glad you found the more serious parts palatable. I was afraid it would be the other way around, with readers' eyes glazing over during the factual detail and with the more over-the-top scenes my only hope to keep their attention.

And I figured a scene about racing through a perilous tunnel to retrieve an artifact would be obligatory in any historical fiction story.

(It really, really isn't.)