In 2013, I had a vision of a city I couldn't get out of my head, so I put it down on paper. Sure, this sounds a little ostentatious, but that's simply how it was. But, as I'm finding out, a concept for a location - no matter how strongly felt - isn't quite enough to create a world that's interesting; even one intentionally dreamlike, as dreams are inextricably linked to history - whether this history is the life story of the dreamer or of the location dreamed. And so I left it.
There are episodes in history I feel like open wounds.
And this has become the motivation for my worlds of late. I feel Interactive Fiction will let me express what I've always wanted to express with games, just directly, and without that time devouring sheen of polish I honestly have a hard time distancing myself from; and having put a massive amount of work into constructing a fully realized world for 'For Each Our Roads of Winter', complete with trade routes, allegiances, conspiracies, betrayal, written history, unwritten history, blatantly false history, cultural norms and conflicts, ("Where does the food come from?" I have answers for two continents); regardless, none of this ever made it into a single model in over a year of work. But in IF, it's not a matter of how this written detail could make it into the world players actually get to experience, it's how could it not?
Back to my brazen line about wounds and history; I'll circle around this for a while before taking it head on in writing this work. I fully intend the first project in this series to never so much as mention the events it's loosely centered on (Paris 1871, just so we can start off without quite too much ambiguity), at least outside these liner notes. In writing these notes publicly I hope to simply put my thoughts down and open them for criticism, concisely and outside the work, as well as for interested readers to peruse after release. I'll also finish each update with open requests for feedback on specific topics ("Is my dialogue terrible or merely passable? Because frankly, I have no idea."). This is an interactive medium, no? What better form of interactivity than having an impact on the work itself. I'll attempt to credit everyone who's had influence on the work in this way, because why the hell not!
As for my first question: "We Who Burn in Memory" at a glance a decent name, or not?
Please excuse the sparseness of this site right now, I'm migrating here from Cargo to take advantage of Squarespace's Blog features. Below are a set of demos composed for the project back in 2013.
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