Glad to be a part of this journey, even if I am just another reader...
I, too hope that something/someone makes you actually smile this week too. Take Care.
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TYSM, and I'm glad you're a part of this journey too, GoodGhost!
"Just another reader" is wildly inaccurate, in my humble opinion. Interactive fiction game are a shared experience. Without readers, what is a game dev doing all of this for?
And does it matter how many readers there are?
In the world of Garden of Bones, I am always the same Narrator, but you are a unique MC, making choices that many other players never make - without you, the main character does not exist. None of the characters do, for that matter. There would be nothing for them to engage with. Only a few lines of code and some carefully crafted possibilities, sitting idle.
They only live - and more to the point, they only live in the exact configuration to which your playthrough has moulded them (the odds of everyone making all the same choices are impossibly low) - from the second you sit down to play until the moment they drift from your mind.
Though you and I aren't sitting on opposite sides of a GM screen, it doesn't mean this shared experience of storytelling is any less valid.
This is a passion project for me, ergo I would truly be happy creating this game for only 1 player. But without that 1 player, all this effort would be entirely meaningless. So whenever the next chapter is published, at whatever hour of the day you decide to continue this journey with us - that is, the twins, myself, and all supporting characters - that 1 important player will be you!
⸜( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )⸝♡
And on a game dev note, thank you for your supportive comments over the past year. They have been very encouraging.
~ Effie
Yeah, fair enough...But with all due respect, save your thanks for later- we still have a long way to go
I won't go around promising things about the uncertain future but what I can promise you is that at least in the present you can always count my support.
I wish that you'll live a life worth living.
-Ghost (saying GoodGhost is a bit awkward icl lol)
Well, Firstly you replying to my comment in itself made my day memorable, so thanks for that...
Secondly, a bit of a personal rant here (humor me if you have the time (I'd hate to waste it)), I once read a quote that said smthing like : "I'll love you forever"– "How can a mortal offer eternity" (Looking at it now, it does go with the theme of your IF). The latter part of that qoute is what kinda stuck with me, so from then on I decided that maybe we give to much attention to the future or the past. Now, im not saying that they aren't important but I just feel that the present is often overlooked and maybe I should start trying to be present in the moment more.
Looking back I'm kinda glad that I was in such a school which was filled with some kind of powerplay. Like this group of ppl against those or wtv. It honestly just taught me a lot about people in general and made me capable of looking at things from multiple perspectives and layers. Interactive Fictions such as yours started out as like an instrument to pass the time, but nowadays it's more than that. It helps me go through lives that I would've never experienced. For example- the death of the beetle, just going through the options I learn more and more about how others might handle death (ofc I take it with a grain of salt because reality is way more complex than just a few choices- its filled with those micro decisions that no one sees). I've experienced death firsthand and even though I'm not really someone who would be sentimental about it, I've seen its effects on other people.
Now of course maybe I'm digging unnecessarily deep and maybe I should just enjoy what's given to me on the platter but where's the fun in that. For me, A piece of literature becomes Art when even after I close the book I am compelled to think about it. You have created one such piece of art and for that I will be forever grateful (contradictory ik, but it adds flavor).
If you survived this rant, I thank you for the time you took and ik this might come off as a bit silly but I just wanted to get it out there, so I did.
- Ghost