A brief tale of seduction with a narrative system for representing suspicion and doubt.
A Curious Dialogue is a prototype for a narrative system and user interface that represents doubt and suspicion. In this instance, a brief narrative of seduction permits the player either to buy into what the hapless traveler claims or, alternatively, cast doubts upon it, in each case with ambivalent results.
As a solo developer, I was responsible for the following:
Writing, Narrative Systems, Game Design, Visual/Graphic Design,
UX
Time On Project:
20 hours
You are alone on a starry night, and as you gaze up at the sky, you ponder a lost love. That's when, from out of nowhere, a traveler calls out to you to ask you for your aid. It's the classic tale of a damsel in distress... or is it? The only way you can be certain is to follow along with what she says, but if you become too engrossed in her story, will you be sucked in to the point where you can no longer turn back? Likewise, if you keep her at arm's length, do yourisk cruelly rejecting someone who truly needed your help?
The game interface plays upon certain aspects of visual perception. As your attention is drawn to the dialogue with the woman in the upper right section of the frame, slightly blurred suspicious thoughts periodically appear in the bottom left. They are partially occluded by the primary figure, as a representation of how our doubts lie in the background of a story that plays out in the foreground of our lives. If the player allows those fuzzy thoughts to draw their attention away from the main thrust of the dialogue, they will find that they can be interacted with, opening up entirely new narrative pathways.
In this mode, the focus shifts to the center, and while the player's suspicions are foregrounded, the main dialogue is now blurred and occluded. Here the player is also allowed to interrogate the traveler's figure, to try and discern what she is up to. Yet even in this mode, the player never sees things in their entirety. Visual occlusion is meant to represent mental occlusion: you never truly get to know what's going on, even in the end. And the traveler does not passively submit to your inquisitive gaze. As the player progresses through these focus scenes, they may notice that she comments on what they are doing and, at some point, may have enough of it.
To maintain a narrative ambivalence alongside the visual/conceptual one, the traveler's reactions to the player's gaze can differ wildly between focus instances. Thus, it is left to the player to decide whether this is representative of her own, emotional ambivalence, or it is just another facet of some grand deceit meant to lure the player away from focusing on certain things she may not want them to see.
The purpose of framing things in this multi-variant, often blurred manner is to discourage the player from simply clicking through to the end and to get them more thoroughly engrossed in the enigma she represents. It also increases replayability. Doubt is a framework in which things are rarely resolved to anyone's satisfaction, and structuring dialogue as a seduction means the player wants to know more. This interface is meant to directly facilitate that desire.
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If you like what you see and want to work together, get in touch!
uahsenaa[at]gmail[dot]com