Spirits of the Darkest Season

Remember to follow your intuition... and embrace the unknown.

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Spirits of the Darkest Season is an interactive fiction piece where players adopt the role of an individual within a place that reflects the darkest seasons of life. Players continue the story along, setting the temporality, and make choices of where the story goes. Overall, the outcome of this work involves decisions of subconscious intuition and is a reflexive opportunity for players to question why it is they do certain things. Furthermore, Spirits of the Darkest Season represents a vulnerable place where players must be prepared to face the unknown as well as darker parts of themselves.

For this assignment, I allowed the story to be defined by the players intuition whether or not they were aware of it. Within the frameworks of Twine, I created multiple paths that were open-ended yet mediated, ultimately guiding players to a final conclusion: a written piece of wisdom to reflect their journey through the work. While the definition of interactive storytelling is ambiguous, it may be possible to encapsulate it as the art of intertwining ideas through various methods of idea creation. Jean Baudrillard defines this fused phenomenon of reality and representation as “hyperreality.” In interactive storytelling, the difference between real and representation is elusive, given that its effects are inherently immersive and separable, thus rendering its very nature undeniably hyperreal.

Ted Chiang's "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," a reading assigned at the beginning of the course, was the beginning of my interest in exploring the concept of multiple possibilities. His work provided a foundational source for my intrigue in engaging my readers in thinking about their possible futures and possible selves. Chiang's unique approach to speculative fiction influenced my overall interests throughout the course, bringing me to the creation of Spirits of the Darkest Season.

Jay Dragon's Wanderhome played a particularly compelling role in the creation of my interactive piece. This particular quote encompasses the root inspiration for my work:

"Beauty lives in endless shapes and forms in the Hæth: everything in this land holds the capacity to be appreciated and admired. Gods and spirits can be found everywhere, from the small, forgotten gods hidden behind rocks and waves, to the fish-headed crossroads daemons and even the great sky gods themselves" (Dragon 2021, 7).

My microscope play reflection also assumed a role in the production of this work. I have been particularly interested in leaving the conclusions open-ended and ambiguous. Similar to Microscope, Spirits of the Darkest Season invites "intrigue and curiosity for the world and characters," except in this case, the player becomes the world builder and character (MacLeod 2023). What is taken away from it is a similar sense of changed perspective on possibility, just like in my groups Microscope gameplay.

Chiang, Ted. 2020. “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom.” OneZero, August 21, 2020. 

Dragon, Jay. 2021. Wanderhome. New York: Possum Creek Games Inc.

MacLeod, Kate. 2023. "MICROSCOPE GAMEPLAY - summary + reflection." CRWR 312 Reflection, UBC.