With Those We Love Alive

Last updated
With Those We Love Alive
Developer(s) Porpentine
Engine Twine
ReleaseOctober 1, 2014
Genre(s) Interactive fiction
Mode(s)Single-player

With Those We Love Alive is a Twine interactive fiction game written by Porpentine. It was released on October 1, 2014 in both English and Hungarian. [1] The musical score was composed by Brenda Neotenomie.

Contents

Gameplay

The game was created using Twine. It uses pink text to navigate through the story and purple text to change a word within a particular node of the story. Readers put in information at the start of the story, which will change the text slightly. [2]

During certain points of the story, the player is asked to draw sigils on their skin. By the end of the game, the reader is left with a representation of their choices on their own body. [3]

Plot

With Those We Love Alive takes place in a world that is both repugnant and beautiful with colorful language describing the twisted landscape and events of the world. It takes place in a restrictive society that gives you no choice but to obey and nowhere to escape. [4] The story begins with the Skull Empress guiding you to her palace to craft many artifacts for her, but between main events, you are allowed to explore the palace and surrounding areas to be greeted with vivid descriptions of this fantasy world. [5] The descriptions of these locations start becoming repetitive after subsequent visits leading some players to continually sleep to advance to the next errand the Skull Empress would have you complete. [5]

Adding to an overall sense of dread, "dead people" start to appear in random locations conveyed through blunt text, alluding to the fact that death is common or an expected aspect of day to day life. These aforementioned dead people are only ever acknowledged by the main character which may allude to the fact they are hallucinations, but whether or not they actually are is left uncertain. The culmination of the story explores resistance against the oppressive and escape into a future controlled by yourself, however uncertain. [4] After your childhood friend arrives at the palace, you flee together with their future left uncertain. [4]

Development

Porpentine has directly stated that of the influences for With Those We Love Alive being "...mob violence, trash struggle, C-PTSD, and child abuse". [6] Other influences include the inclusion of queer elements, and "trash girls". [7] [6]

Reception

The Guardian notes Porpentine's surrealist style of storytelling remains present in this work while praising Porpentine's ingenuity in imploring the reader to draw on their own skin for making the story uncomfortable yet memorable. [8]

A Rock, Paper, Shotgun article by Alice O'Connor praises the vivid and descriptive text of the world-building and exploratory elements of the piece. O'Conner comments that the aspect of drawing sigils on your skin denote "...you're marking and changing yourself in response to cruel and oppressive things". [9]

Awards

With Those We Love Alive won Best Writing and Best Individual NPC at the 2014 XYZZY awards, [10] as well as receiving 5th place at 2014's Interactive Fiction Competition. [11]

Related Research Articles

Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of Interactive narratives or Interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be "text-only", however, graphical text adventure games, where the text is accompanied by graphics still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles.

The Interactive Fiction Competition is one of several annual competitions for works of interactive fiction. It has been held since 1995. It is intended for fairly short games, as judges are only allowed to spend two hours playing a game before deciding how many points to award it, but longer games are allowed entry. The competition has been described as the "Super Bowl" of interactive fiction.

In computing, Xyzzy is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable or as a video game cheat code. Xyzzy comes from the Colossal Cave Adventure computer game, where it is the first "magic string" that most players encounter.

Text Adventure Development System (TADS) is a prototype-based domain-specific programming language and set of standard libraries for creating interactive fiction (IF) games.

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Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.

The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of XYZZYnews. Any game released during the year prior to the award ceremony is eligible for nomination to receive an award. The decision process takes place in two stages: members of the interactive fiction community nominate works within specific categories and sufficiently supported nominations become finalists within those categories. Community members then vote among the finalists, and the game receiving a plurality of votes is given the award in an online ceremony.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Porpentine (game designer)</span> American video game designer, new media artist, writer and curator

Porpentine Charity Heartscape is a video game designer, new media artist, writer and curator based in Oakland, California. They are primarily a developer of hypertext games and interactive fiction mainly built using Twine. They have been awarded a Creative Capital grant, a Rhizome.org commission, the Prix Net Art, and a Sundance Institute's New Frontier Story Lab Fellowship. Their work was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. They were an editor for freeindiegam.es, a curated collection of free, independently produced games. They were a columnist for online PC gaming magazine Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

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References

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  2. Hannahfussner (2020-10-04). "And Those We Love Alive Analysis". DST 3880W. Retrieved 2023-11-26.
  3. "With Those We Love Alive | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
  4. 1 2 3 Hunter-Loubert, Hunter (2020). Rewriting the Game Queer Trans Strategies of Survival, Resistance, and Relationality in Twine Games. Concordia University. pp. 40–42.
  5. 1 2 Grace, Lindsay (2020). Love and Electronic Affection: A Design Primer (1st ed.). Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. pp. 139–140. ISBN   9781138367234.
  6. 1 2 "Electronic Literature Collection - Volume 3". collection.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  7. Thevenin, Benjamin (2022). Making media matter: critical literacy, popular culture, and creative production. New York London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. p. 104. ISBN   978-0-367-52434-0.
  8. Alexander, Leigh (2014-10-22). "The joy of text – the fall and rise of interactive fiction". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  9. O'Connor, Alice (2014-11-14). "Physically Interactive Fiction: With Those We Love Alive". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  10. Ashwell, Sam Kabo (2015-04-27). "2014 Awards results | The XYZZY Awards" . Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  11. "IFComp 2014". ifcomp.org. Retrieved 2023-11-06.
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