The Future of “Choosing Your Own Adventure”

April 19, 2012 by 1 Comment

 

Electronic literature has definitely moved it’s way up the ladder as an accepted literary form. Elit has been limited primarily by the progression of technology, starting out as basic text commands and simple hypertext to moving it’s way into interactive video games and digital poetry. Now with new technology such as smart phones and iPads, elit may again jump to a whole new level and become limitless. I’m not talking about reading novels on the Kindle or other reading apps, but the idea of elit apps. Even the Graveyard could be bought as an iPhone app.

With wireless technology, anything web based can literally be accessed anywhere and because people now have access to wireless internet on their phones, elit has and will become even more popular because of the accessibility over standard literature. Smart phones now allow users to play interactive video games and read choose your own adventure books in a whole new way.

IPhone has a “choose your own adventure” app called Choice of the Dragon that allows the user to play as a fire-breathing dragon that sleeps on gold and his favorite hobby is kidnapping princesses. The Dragon can be controlled by the user and can pillage, loot and scare all the knights that try and rescue the princess. Another elit app is the Choice of Broadside which has been described as “A swashbuckling naval adventure” that has characteristics of Forester’s Hornblower with a dash of Jane Austen. This app gives the reader multiple choice type questions that determines where the story will go next. For the zombie lovers out there, iPhone also has an adventure called the Choice of Zombies. Here the reader must fight for survival, try and save all their friends, and discover what caused the zombie virus.

With accessibility to free apps like these that allow the reader to choose the   direction of the story right on their smart phone, elit definitely will gain popularity and support. Phone apps are definitely something elit writers should be thinking about when creating their works because they could potentially gain a whole new group of supporters who otherwise would not sit down at a computer and search for elit. I personally would be more likely to look at elit on my phone while waiting for a meeting or in a long line than sitting down to read a choose your own adventure book at home, even if it were free on my computer. Accessibility can be key to the progression of the future of electronic literature.

 

                  

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A Matter of Choice

March 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For this blog, I decided to try my hand at Twine since I focused all of my attention on Inform 7 for the creative project. I made a simple hypertext choose your own adventure,  A Matter of Choice. I thought using this program would be more difficult since I hadn’t used it since we learned it in class, but it was very easy to use. I still do not feel up to the challenge of beautifying my projects just yet, though, so I left it in the simple Sugarcane format. I did try the Jonah format first, but I’ve grown so used to the Sugarcane sidebar and dark color scheme that I had to change it. I enjoyed exploring all the different ways a person’s day can change, but next time I work with Twine I will try for more complexity. A lot of the Twine works out there are very impressively complex, especially the ones on the blog from the creative projects. Now that I know I can use the program successfully,  I look forward to doing more with it the next time.

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Creative Project: The Key To Dreams

March 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment

My original idea was to give an old well known poem new life by creating an interactive poem like the one we viewed in class. Though I had originally wanted to do a project centered around the Young-Hea Chang interactive poem Dak0ta, I eventually settled on creating an interactive text/ choose your own adventure story, when I became aware that my original idea was not really possible given the time and the resources. None the less, I am very pleased with my finished product, The Key To Dreams.

Design: I designed the story in a way that each time the viewer clicks through the story they gain a bit more information than the last time. The viewer is encouraged to make different choices throughout the course of the story that will in the end effect the meaning of the story’s ending. The results of the progression of the story are entirely up to the whim of the viewer’s selections, however, the progression works best when the reader selects the first option the first time through and the second the second time through and so on. Any way the viewer chooses to click through the story they will still get a story but not as much information is revealed. Each time the story line progresses a little more.

Faults: Though I am very pleased of the finished product, I must admit that there were a few things that I probably would have done differently had I been able to figure out how to do so. The main change that I would have made was to completely eliminate the choice to select the rewind button on the side panel. I tried several times to do this using the help of w3schools, a few of my computer science friends, and even my suite mate. To no avail I did not figure out how to do this in time so the option remains available. I wanted to eliminate this option so that the viewer would be forced to click through the entire story again rather than simply rewind to select a different path.

Appearance: I thought long and hard about whether or not I should try to change the appearance of my story. In the end I decided against it because, in my case, the basic dark design color scheme really matched the dark nature of my story.  I decided to keep it as is but did experiment with different color palettes.

Reflection: I feel that through the creation of this project I have gained a better understand of the Twine program and gained a better appreciation for choose your own adventure stories in general. I am very proud of my project and I feel that it shows just how much hard work and time I put into creating it.

Now You Try: Here is my Creative Project. Please feel free to click through the story and make sure to post a comment back to this post and tell me what you think. Remember the story changes slightly each time you play it, so be sure to play it multiple times and make different choices with each session.

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