I think it made me more eager to click than to read, more eager to be done than to sit with. Had the completionist urgency of a game (I want to beat it) with the only obstacle being how fast I could click. After all, misreading proved only a shrug of the shoulders: was I actually deciding to look at the herbs or was I selecting randomly? Became difficult after the first two choices to distinguish between the two.
Not condemning the effort nor the exploration, I may just not be the right audience for it, but I think without -stakes- on the reader's part (as others have noted, Choose Your Own Adventure had -death- as its stakes, as well as the sort of maze-like horror of 'taking the wrong turn') it was hard for me to bite, hard for me to feel moved in the way I am when I read your work without my only involvement being 'to comprehend'.
I agree entirely. The interactive elements in this are more flavour details: the reader/player can choose to observe particular aspects in more detail, and in that way their own interests influence the overall detail.
There are big, obvious flaws with this approach:
1. There's no stakes, as you say. It's all tiny nudges (!) rather than actual decisions or changes. No consequences.
2. A lot of the details revealed by the choices were written for the game version specifically. While this maybe has a fun sense of 'bonus content', it also means that I didn't think it was vital enough to include in the original text, and consequently it's a bit lightweight.
As an experiment I really enjoyed doing this, but it's not an angle I'll pursue further. I'm intrigued by a full adaptation, where choice does matter and can influence the story somehow, though I don't think Triverse would be a good fit for that.
Thanks, Geoffrey! I'm looking forward to working on some further projects in Ink. I definitely spend far less time wrestling with the language and coding and moe time on the creative aspects, compared to any of the systems I've tried previously.
I am all for new formats and ways to engage with people through story. Plus… Choose Your Own Adventure books were the best. But did it drive anyone else nuts that when you flipped through, there were some endings you could NEVER get to, no matter how much you changed your choices along the way? Maybe it was just me, but I like that Ink guards against missing large chunks of the story. Thanks for sharing your process!
I always found the unexpected deaths frustrating in those books, too, because they bore no particular connection to the choices to were making. They were often quite arbitrary and impossible to predict. In some ways, I think those early 1980s books suffered from being pre-video games, when a lot of that aspect of design has been worked out over the decades.
Inkle's own work I enjoy immensely, in part because much of it doesn't really have 'game over' in the traditional sense. Lots of choice, but always moving forward, and in that respect it's much closer to the experience of reading a book, while retaining the interactivity.
Hi Sir, I too am seeking to create interactive fiction on Substack. I've been using Twine, but I will try Ink. I just need some guidance on how to post the stories. Someone told me to "Embed" the HTML. Anyway, if you have any advice sir, I sure would love to hear it. Thank you and have an awesome day.
I think it made me more eager to click than to read, more eager to be done than to sit with. Had the completionist urgency of a game (I want to beat it) with the only obstacle being how fast I could click. After all, misreading proved only a shrug of the shoulders: was I actually deciding to look at the herbs or was I selecting randomly? Became difficult after the first two choices to distinguish between the two.
Not condemning the effort nor the exploration, I may just not be the right audience for it, but I think without -stakes- on the reader's part (as others have noted, Choose Your Own Adventure had -death- as its stakes, as well as the sort of maze-like horror of 'taking the wrong turn') it was hard for me to bite, hard for me to feel moved in the way I am when I read your work without my only involvement being 'to comprehend'.
I agree entirely. The interactive elements in this are more flavour details: the reader/player can choose to observe particular aspects in more detail, and in that way their own interests influence the overall detail.
There are big, obvious flaws with this approach:
1. There's no stakes, as you say. It's all tiny nudges (!) rather than actual decisions or changes. No consequences.
2. A lot of the details revealed by the choices were written for the game version specifically. While this maybe has a fun sense of 'bonus content', it also means that I didn't think it was vital enough to include in the original text, and consequently it's a bit lightweight.
As an experiment I really enjoyed doing this, but it's not an angle I'll pursue further. I'm intrigued by a full adaptation, where choice does matter and can influence the story somehow, though I don't think Triverse would be a good fit for that.
I liked your experiment! And I agree that Inkle is pretty terrific. As a writer, I feel very at home scripting with it.
Thanks, Geoffrey! I'm looking forward to working on some further projects in Ink. I definitely spend far less time wrestling with the language and coding and moe time on the creative aspects, compared to any of the systems I've tried previously.
This is fascinating-
I am all for new formats and ways to engage with people through story. Plus… Choose Your Own Adventure books were the best. But did it drive anyone else nuts that when you flipped through, there were some endings you could NEVER get to, no matter how much you changed your choices along the way? Maybe it was just me, but I like that Ink guards against missing large chunks of the story. Thanks for sharing your process!
I always found the unexpected deaths frustrating in those books, too, because they bore no particular connection to the choices to were making. They were often quite arbitrary and impossible to predict. In some ways, I think those early 1980s books suffered from being pre-video games, when a lot of that aspect of design has been worked out over the decades.
Inkle's own work I enjoy immensely, in part because much of it doesn't really have 'game over' in the traditional sense. Lots of choice, but always moving forward, and in that respect it's much closer to the experience of reading a book, while retaining the interactivity.
Hi Sir, I too am seeking to create interactive fiction on Substack. I've been using Twine, but I will try Ink. I just need some guidance on how to post the stories. Someone told me to "Embed" the HTML. Anyway, if you have any advice sir, I sure would love to hear it. Thank you and have an awesome day.