Interface Drama
Apr. 13th, 2020 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
illuminesce "What is Terranova?"
Our very first blog post asks the same question, and takes a shot at answering it, but I'm still searching for a more satisfying way to explain our game to people.
When folks ask me what I'm working on, I sometimes say I'm creating a work of Interactive Fiction. If I need a more accessible term, I'll say I'm making a Choose Your Own Adventure style game. In the past, I've also described Terranova as "like a dating sim, but with friendship instead of dating", or "like an operating system that you can play".
All of these things contain some truth, but none of them really hit the mark. None of them show the whole picture.
I think the difficulty in describing Terranova comes from the fact that it's part of an emerging, and at this point still unnamed genre. One that includes a number of games that share a similar way of creating verisimilitude. Games including:
What these games have in common is that they tell a story through interface. Through windows and apps, folders and files. So let's give this genre a name. Let's call them Interface Dramas.
So there you go. What is Terranova? Terranova is an Interface Drama. An interactive story told through the lens of a computer interface.
Our very first blog post asks the same question, and takes a shot at answering it, but I'm still searching for a more satisfying way to explain our game to people.
When folks ask me what I'm working on, I sometimes say I'm creating a work of Interactive Fiction. If I need a more accessible term, I'll say I'm making a Choose Your Own Adventure style game. In the past, I've also described Terranova as "like a dating sim, but with friendship instead of dating", or "like an operating system that you can play".
All of these things contain some truth, but none of them really hit the mark. None of them show the whole picture.
I think the difficulty in describing Terranova comes from the fact that it's part of an emerging, and at this point still unnamed genre. One that includes a number of games that share a similar way of creating verisimilitude. Games including:
- Analogue: A Hate Story
- Her Story
- Telling Lies
- Emily Is Away
- SIMULACRA
What these games have in common is that they tell a story through interface. Through windows and apps, folders and files. So let's give this genre a name. Let's call them Interface Dramas.
So there you go. What is Terranova? Terranova is an Interface Drama. An interactive story told through the lens of a computer interface.
