Interactive Fiction is a genre of game or electronic literature where users participate in the generation or exploration of a story world. In the early 1980s, text adventures like Zork and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy invited players to interact with their computers to explore fictional game worlds. That tradition continues today with a diverse range of tools that make possible all sorts of literary interactivity. The links below will help you scratch the surface of the worlds upon worlds of interactive fiction. Then we'll make our own interactive fiction stories and post them to our domains!
Explore some works of interactive fiction from the above links or those listed under Resources. Choose one that you find particularly gripping or inspiring, and share it in the #interactivefiction channel on Slack, with a short note about why you like it.
Look over a few of the #interactivefiction examples from your colleagues' Slack posts and reply to at least one of them. Also install Twine or another app for building interactive fiction/text games (see Resources below) and come ready to play around with it in class.
Think about a possible premise for a work of interactive fiction. Come ready to discuss it in class, or even get started building it. Here are a few possibilities to get started:
Tuesday class meeting
We'll spend most of class sharing project ideas/work-in-progress and playing with Twine (or your other platform of choice) for building our interactive stories.
Complete your interactive story, publish it on your domain, and post it in #interactivefiction on Slack. Consider linking to it publicly on social media.
In Thursday's class, we'll show off and discuss finished work, reflect on the process, figure out any last-second tech support that is needed, and introduce Week 14 (digital/human music).
Finish any necessary work on your interactive fiction project. This may involve finishing after getting stuck and receiving help on Thursday, or making any necessary last-second changes.
Be sure to do some work on your domain this week. That could simply be posting your project and linking to it from your main domain, with a little contextual explanation.
Complete your self-assessment for Week 13 and add it to the document you created last week. Be sure to comment on the updates you made to your domain, and include links to project work and at least some of your annotations/replies.
For materials due Monday and Tuesday, see the Week 14 Guide.
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