Play “The Strange Lab” by Max Tittle
A new week, a new Into Games creative brief: Time travel week!
With the genre came the challenge: write a descriptive piece that explores a time traveller’s lab. The challenge was to evoke a sense of place for the readers. Is the lab abandoned or inhabited, dangerous or wonderous? But for an additional challenge, we could create a game on twine where the player would explore the lab themselves, an interactive narrative!
I must admit, I dove into this challenge and created something far beyond what I had intended. It was moments before the deadline and I had finally finished and submitted my piece when the messages flooded in! All the friends I had forced to play the game to test for me proceeded to find typos and errors abound!
As a result, I don’t think this is my greatest piece of work. Because I vastly underestimated the complexity that I would attempt to accomplish, I ended up rushing and I failed to keep my writing at a high standard. In the implementation of code and the exploration system I missed opportunities to use evocative writing and at times I know I could have done better to create a sense of place.
However, enough of my personal criticisms! From a positive perspective, I enjoyed the tiny details I put into my work. Little fragments of writing will change when you manipulate your surroundings or have knowledge of certain parts of the game. I enjoyed using Twine for the first time, and I think the overall story is strong! And… it’s the first game I’ve created entirely by myself! It’s uploaded to itch.io and available for anyone to play! you can find it here.
The very next time I read a blog, Hopefully it doesnt disappoint me as much as this particular one. After all, I know it was my choice to read through, but I really thought youd have something helpful to talk about. All I hear is a bunch of complaining about something you can fix if you were not too busy seeking attention.