13 | LPM | AS THE EYE CAN SEE
13 | LPM | AS THE EYE CAN SEE
by: SkyShard
Progress:
- I decided to read through this piece three times, hoping to absorb as much as I could from it. That took a total of around 17 minutes.
Engagement with Horror Genre:
- I don’t really see this as a horror piece, rather, it’s more like an autumnal/Halloween-themed literary piece about memory, and how it is filtered by both nostalgia and loss.
Things I Appreciated:
-
I feel this is a more open-ended piece. It’s very well written, pithy with its use of space on each page. In rereading it multiple times, I challenged myself to think about what motifs, emotions, or themes rose to the surface. Here is some rambling discussion of a few things stood out to me. First, the anchoring of time and place, with the cottonwood tree at the edge of the maze, and the repeated date (Oct. 30th) providing the grounding for what is happening. Somewhat unusually, we start from the contemporary year (2024) and flow backward, a few years at a time. As the narrator takes us further and further back in memory, I had a sensation of how those memories fragmented, feathering into a kind of fractal, wisping around the edges of the big loss of her mother that is outlined but not described. The feeling of the memory of the castle is placed alongside the camera recordings that show something different, but we see that the camera has its gaps and inconsistencies too—unable to see, for instance, into the car ride. In the 2024 entry, the narrator is still insistent upon using her phone to hold onto what she can of this tree’s image. There is a focus on sight, or being seen, as well as on sound, and waiting. I feel pain in the gaps, the things not fully recalled, that nevertheless haunt the narrative (like whatever it was that Dakota said, which one could infer but perhaps never truly know while reading this).
-
The imagery and autumnal vibes are pretty evocative here. The best way I can think of to describe it is, it embodies the October-30th-ness of October 30th. The atmosphere is something beautiful but slightly foreboding, like a hug that feels colder than you expect it to.
Miscellaneous Comments/Recommendations:
-
Interestingly, this is not a choice-based narrative. Really, the interactive element is the presentation, the blocking of sentences on each card/page, guiding the reader’s attention to certain moments. It contributes to a sensation of guardedness between the narrator and reader, keeping the reader (at least, as I experienced) at a slight distance, which seems to mirror the guarded way the narrator talks around the edges of some of the memories.
-
I know this was impossible due to the requirements for the (simultaneously entered) Bare-Bones Jam, but the background/cover art is so evocative and beautiful that I wish it had been incorporated into the visual presentation of the story. I found that I missed it after clicking through to play and it was gone.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
-
I think this is a good example of how to use IF in the format of a short story. Like it’s a good reminder that a piece can have these interactive elements and control over the visual presentation, without being choice-based or having to be in second-person, for instance.
-
I found the portrayal of the narrator’s voice interesting as the time grew further and further in the past—we are not seeing how they would have thought about what they were experiencing at the time, rather, we are seeing those events recalled and reflected upon by the contemporary version of the narrator, diverging further and further from the past version of themselves.
Memorable Moment:
- The moment that sticks out the most in my mind is the recognition that hearing her mother’s voice in the recording was more powerful than the visuals. It reminded me of my own experience, of how a loved one’s answering machine message—perhaps something that is disappearing as a medium, I suppose—gained new significance after their death as a way to hear them again.