In-Between
Just as some people seem realer to us than others, some places seem to be solid while others are ephemeral and hypothetical. Our map of the world is akin to a sensory homonculus, exaggerated out of proportion in our homes and…
Category Narrative Design
Storyland
Here’s a weird idea I’ve been playing with: A concept of narrative dimensionality. First, take a painting, or a photo, or even a description of a room. This is a moment, frozen in time. It may imply a greater story,…
Idea Man
Sometimes, as a creative-type person, you are going to realize that you have no ideas. Absolutely none. And, when you’re starting out, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’ve run out. You’ve tapped your well. You’ve emptied yourself, and now…
Noise
I ran a fan every moment of every day, for three or four months, over the Summer. Now that the temperature has cooled down, I turned the fan off and immediately began to feel uncomfortable. I could hear too much,…
Just a Joke
It’s peculiar sometimes to think about how narrow and tenuous the line which divides horror from humor can be. Both genres have deep roots in the unexpected, both make liberal use of the grotesque – the main difference between them…
Depths
When we create, most of our work is never seen. Most of what we pour into our art is too dense and sinks to the bottom, where, though it cannot be observed directly, somehow its presence is still felt. It’s…
ProMaRaRo 4: Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus
I didn’t play it. Well, technically I did. I played for 40 minutes or so. That was long enough for me to remember what an unpleasant, albeit intriguing, world that Oddworld is. Abe, the player character, seems to be the…
ProMaRaRo 3: Anodyne
I like Anodyne. I liked it more than I expected to, in all honesty: I was expecting a solid and aesthetically pleasing retro-gaming experience, but what I found was something much stranger and more beautiful than I had anticipated. Anodyne…
A Real Sum of a Glitch
Around this time last week, I discussed how games have a hard time portraying the unreliability of memories because this erodes the player’s ability to trust the information they’re receiving from the game. I’ve been thinking about that, and it…
Life Story
Every time something new enters our lives, we rewrite our story to accommodate it. We project it into our future, and sometimes into our pasts, in order to construct a story for ourselves that makes sense and tells us who…