Mental Escape

Design and markup done by Joseph Poselenzny.

This project, created in Twine, takes inspiration from many sources. The narrative purpose of the story is to instill a sense of panic and contempt in the player. In the location descriptions at the beginning of each page, I develop my ability to write compelling descriptions and communicate the layout of an area. The player should be able to imagine the environment. The timer element is based off of my initial impressions of time-based interactions in Twine when playing through Pippin Barr's https://pippinbarr.github.io/lets-play-ancient-greek-punishment-the-twine/. The time limit adds to the sense of dread and excitement in the player. The ability to choose when to start the timer by pressing the "Continue" button on each page still keeps some of the power in the player's hands and prevents player stress from being forced to read quickly without warning.

This project takes a lot of inspiration from Bandersnatch and Pippin Barr. I wanted to give the player a sense of dread, similar to that which I experienced during Bandersnatch. This project also addresses the shortcomings which I found in those projects, such as Bandersnatch not having any unique path for not choosing an option and letting the time limit run out. I was also inspired by the game "Sortie en Mer" and its mouse scrolling mechanics which birthed a section in this game.

The antagonist in this game gives me a chance to explore non-visual storytelling and advance the plot. This game is also a systems and level design exercise for me, in which I am taking the limited functionality options of Twine and creating game rules and "levels" from them. Other inspirations are hikikomori and incel culture, the Saw series, and the "backrooms" meme.

Check out my GitHub: https://github.com/fatjosephina

Or tell me what you think about the game in the comments below!