A walk

This game was a project for my Contemporary Prose class. Its just a small little thing, around 5 minutes, and really not that many choices. Its based on Open City by Teju Cole and Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald. Both their books deal with exploration, with Cole's work focusing on New York City, and Sebald focusing on the county of Suffolk. 

The focus on characters is something Cole does a lot in Open City, and I wanted to replicate that, but I didn't want to do it through dialogue, since I wanted a dialogue-less story. So I simply talked about the characters in the world. I do worry if I talked to the audience, and not for the audience.

Sebald tends to go on tangents, talking about stories and interesting facts he came across during his walk across the UK. I tried to spin it though, by allowing the player the chance to go on these tangents by clicking through a prompt. 

I also want to mention, I fictionalized everything. None of the characters or places I discuss in this piece of Interactive Fiction is real. While some of the details are inspired by family, friends, and things near me, I made all of this up as practice for my worldbuilding.

Throughout the "game," I tried to include a bit of memory and that despite the most important pieces of it may be gone, what they really mean is there. I pulled this from Open City. Much of the sections about how cities', and really governments, fail its people, is something discussed in a roundabout manner in Rings of Saturn, through its discussion of the effects of WWII had on Suffolk's economy. I, however, wanted to directly discuss it, which may have been a little too forward of me.

Either way, thank you for playing, and please read both books. They have been great inspirations for me