Presentation Types
Individual Presentation
Description
The Cost is an interactive fiction told through second person, following the character (“you”) as they wake up to discover themselves in a world they hardly remember. Outside there is an apocalypse, and a doctor has fixed the character to help rectify the world. While there are choices to make at the end, all of them are focused on “immortality” and what the cost of that is.
I came into the process of this game with the world already in my mind, knowing that I wanted it to be an apocalypse type of story. But besides that, I didn’t know how I wanted it to start or end. I didn’t know the title until halfway through finishing it. Really, this whole assignment felt like it eventually just… Appeared to me. The narrative, the ending, ect. I like to write things that leave people wondering at the end, and I wanted there to be suspense throughout it. I wanted the player to discover information as they went on. I wanted the ending to have the ability to live or die, but perhaps the options were more of a survival than living.
I was definitely a little nervous because of how much talent there is in this class. I’m an author, not a coder or anything. I can create characters. So I wanted a villain that seemed kind and welcoming, but could ultimately be the destruction of the player. I also was unsure what I was going to do with the man in black for a while, until I realized that he could be a helper if played in a certain way. In my coding, I put Irritation as a variant. I originally wanted that to lead to the doctor either letting the player go or not, but I realized as I went on with his character that
he would not do that. But the man in black, seemingly stoic, understood what the player was feeling. He went through it all, and wanted to help as long as the variable was correct.
I really thought I was going to allow more options like some of the games we played (“Zorc” comes to mind), but as I continued with the narrative, I realized I wanted everyone playing to get the same message: Immortality is more than most people would want to bargain for. There were very open options for them to get more information in the beginning, but it all tied into a seemingly neat middle, to multiple endings at the end. I never planned that to be my structure, but it felt right as I continued on with the designing.
I am proud of the middle section where the player “remembers” what happened to them. It let me follow through with the kind of feeling I was looking for—the tension and the confusion and the realization. The heart beat felt extremely right, and I believed added to that tension that I was trying to reach.
I think maybe with more understanding of this app, I would go on with a bunch of wild variables to lead to a bunch of different endings. And if I ever do decide to expand on this, I would want to expand on the endings. I think for this assignment, however, that type of ending reminded me a lot of “The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo” in regards to the more common endings. It leads to a big finale, but the finale allows a bit of room for interpretation. This was important to me, because I wanted the ending to settle uncomfortably for those who played it. Ultimately, I’m proud of the writing in this. I think Cornelius is an intriguing character, and the endings hit how I planned them to.
Recommended Citation
Williams, Nicole, "Twine 4: The Cost" (2022). KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference. 4.
https://research.library.kutztown.edu/compconf/2022/presentations/4
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Twine 4: The Cost
The Cost is an interactive fiction told through second person, following the character (“you”) as they wake up to discover themselves in a world they hardly remember. Outside there is an apocalypse, and a doctor has fixed the character to help rectify the world. While there are choices to make at the end, all of them are focused on “immortality” and what the cost of that is.
I came into the process of this game with the world already in my mind, knowing that I wanted it to be an apocalypse type of story. But besides that, I didn’t know how I wanted it to start or end. I didn’t know the title until halfway through finishing it. Really, this whole assignment felt like it eventually just… Appeared to me. The narrative, the ending, ect. I like to write things that leave people wondering at the end, and I wanted there to be suspense throughout it. I wanted the player to discover information as they went on. I wanted the ending to have the ability to live or die, but perhaps the options were more of a survival than living.
I was definitely a little nervous because of how much talent there is in this class. I’m an author, not a coder or anything. I can create characters. So I wanted a villain that seemed kind and welcoming, but could ultimately be the destruction of the player. I also was unsure what I was going to do with the man in black for a while, until I realized that he could be a helper if played in a certain way. In my coding, I put Irritation as a variant. I originally wanted that to lead to the doctor either letting the player go or not, but I realized as I went on with his character that
he would not do that. But the man in black, seemingly stoic, understood what the player was feeling. He went through it all, and wanted to help as long as the variable was correct.
I really thought I was going to allow more options like some of the games we played (“Zorc” comes to mind), but as I continued with the narrative, I realized I wanted everyone playing to get the same message: Immortality is more than most people would want to bargain for. There were very open options for them to get more information in the beginning, but it all tied into a seemingly neat middle, to multiple endings at the end. I never planned that to be my structure, but it felt right as I continued on with the designing.
I am proud of the middle section where the player “remembers” what happened to them. It let me follow through with the kind of feeling I was looking for—the tension and the confusion and the realization. The heart beat felt extremely right, and I believed added to that tension that I was trying to reach.
I think maybe with more understanding of this app, I would go on with a bunch of wild variables to lead to a bunch of different endings. And if I ever do decide to expand on this, I would want to expand on the endings. I think for this assignment, however, that type of ending reminded me a lot of “The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo” in regards to the more common endings. It leads to a big finale, but the finale allows a bit of room for interpretation. This was important to me, because I wanted the ending to settle uncomfortably for those who played it. Ultimately, I’m proud of the writing in this. I think Cornelius is an intriguing character, and the endings hit how I planned them to.
