The latest story in my 52 Murders project is a branching narrative called Breakdown. It’s my first proper attempt at interactive fiction, which is an area I have a sort of love/hate relationship with. On the one hand, I think it’s an interesting idea to introduce choice into stories, offering the reader different ways of experiencing a story. On the other hand, I find old-school text adventures to be impossibly frustrating and a horrible waste of time. I’ve watched Get Lamp, which details the rise and fall of the text adventure, and I came away with two main points.
- The idea of interactivity in fiction isn’t a new idea, but it is one that still hasn’t been done well (as far as I’m concerned).
- I never want to be like the people who write, program or enjoy text adventures.
While I’ve always liked the idea of adventure games, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not really the sort of person they’re aimed at. I’ve completed The Secret of Monkey Island, got a reasonable amount of the way through the Indiana Jones Adventures and a fair way through most of the Broken Sword games, but I don’t think I’ve ever got past the first room of a text adventure. Why is this? I think there are a couple of reasons.
The first is that my primary interest is making stories. I’m used to writing them and I enjoy being told them. What I don’t like doing is writing other people’s stories for them and that, for better or worse, is what text adventures feel like to me. I don’t want to work out what you think the right thing to say to the gatekeeper is. I either want to decide for myself or have it told for me. Text adventures feel too much like work, and not work that I enjoy.
