Where to go!?

I don’t know!!

I sat down and started playing the game again without having read the manual. I felt like in the first hour I had played, that I had covered a lot of territory in the game. Quickly I learned in this session that there is still even more. Though what I found had expanded, the chance of running into the same spot to only get stuck increased in chance as well.

Getting tired of the repetitive results I finally concluded that I should read the manual. I know that we discussed in class that the style for manuals when this game was created intended to tell a story for the game to take place in. By doing such, blurred the lines- for a split second for me- when defining this as either a game or as an interactive narrative. Still unprepared for this approach, I was blown away, and had a blast reading the short story. This helped me better understand the game in a few ways. Like what I could encounter, to imagining what the world is like that I am within.

I truly did struggle with the fact if this was a game or an interactive narrative. Though looking at the Simulation Versus Narrative reading by Gonzalo Frasca, helped eliminate any uncertainties. Fasca’s point in regards to what is the distinction between games vs  narrative came down to the concept of behavior. For games they have this, because in games it’s a series of inputs followed by a series of outputs. For narrative its a fixed thing that doesn’t change (it is what it is). After having to restart the game due to deaths, you start to see these little variations in the game. The best example is the troll. At times, the troll is calm at first sight, and doesn’t try to attack you immediately. While others he charges on first sight. Woo