WATT
Twine. A surreal, metaphorical journey.
You find yourself in a mysterious town, with no memories. An omnipresent voice (God? you wonder) tells you are the chosen one, and you have to pass seven trials before the day is done in order to save the world.
I found this uneven, though parts of this were intriguing. There isn’t a lot explained at the beginning, without enough of a story hook introduced and with a narrative voice I disliked (an early line like “Great. Not only are you lost, but now you’re some kind of chosen one” just felt too much like a flippant wink to the camera), and as a result I found it a bit hard to get through. However, by the second half of the trials, the writing does become stronger. Tonally, the beginning and the end feel like slices from completely different source materials. Looking back, I can see the vision a bit better, but in the moment, the journey starts off rough and isn’t able to completely regain its footing by the end, though it does some interesting things.
The basic thing is that there seems to be a large focus on the overall structure of the trials which comes through (I figured out what this was going for at around trial 5), but less focus seemed to be on structuring this like a story being experienced linearly by a reader. The goal of why you’re finishing the trials to get to the lighthouse is internationally a bit abstract, but that made it hard to want to keep pushing forward. There’s no characterization in the early stages and then a lot of characterization in the end. Maybe if the intro into the first trial had established different tonal expectations and made me start to look at things through a more surreal lens instead, given me a hook that made me want to follow along on the journey being told a bit more, I think that might have helped? As it is, I thought this was going to be a comedic, slightly meta game with a tone that was just a bit too irreverent to take seriously based on the beginning section, and that’s thankfully not the case by the end. I think I could even see the starting writing style being an intentional reflection of the central metaphor of what the trials represent, but that isn’t clear in the moment. The second trial felt whiplash-y as it stands (a sudden shift into generally much more sincere dialogue, with a way too quick romantic connection), but I could see, given a different framing, how it could have felt like a more metaphorical scene.
In the later trials, there’s a sense of greater depth and sincerity. The ending felt quite ambitious and went big, and although I didn’t quite connect to all the emotional heft of the moment, I was able to sense what the story was going for then, unlike at the beginning. There’s some good moments and ideas scattered throughout: the surreal tone at points, the metaphorical structure, the choices in trial 4, and some of the writing in the latter stages which is much more solid, and comes off way more earnest. Ambition here, and I think I can see some intention behind some of the stylistic and narrative choices in retrospect, even if they didn’t fully connect.