UPDATE: After the surprising upset victory of Of Their Shadows Deep, coach Amanda Walker agreed to an impromptu post-game interview to field questions from fans. Here’s what she had to say when we caught up with her…
Q: In your initial reaction to learning about the Free IF Playoffs, you said that you thought Of Their Shadows Deep is “not in the same league” as Birdland. Those playing both apparently disagree. What are the strengths of Birdland that you thought made it unbeatable?
AW: It’s really well-written, of course, and it’s also a much longer game than mine. It’s one of those games that captures and crystallizes a moment in life, that of anxious adolescent helplessness. I remember immediately identifying with the PC’s anxiety and sense of difference. But it manages to be serious and funny and trippy and a slice of life and a detective story all at once. It clearly has staying power, probably because it manages to do so many things so well. It’s a top-notch game and it definitely struck me as a heavyweight champ.
Q: Which IF authors do you admire most, and why?
AW: Too many to list. Obviously I admire Emily Short a great deal-- she’s just phenomenal at weaving story with mechanic, and at melding old-school text adventure stuff with novel gameplay. Art DiBianca is a perennial favorite of mine-- I love how he is always refining his methods to fit that streamlined sensibility of his, and his games are always fun, which is something that a lot of IF isn’t (I don’t mean that pejoratively. A lot of my work isn’t “fun”). I tend to admire writers who experiment to realize some larger inner vision, and both Short and DiBianca are that type of writer. Ryan Veeder is on this list too, as is Autumn Chen and many others.
Q: You are open about your relative lack of technical expertise when it comes to programming, and it seems that you have chosen Inform as your primary tool. Why did you pick it over other options? Has it been harder or easier to use than you expected? Which other tool(s) interest you, if any?
AW: There really wasn’t any other option than to be open about it if I wanted help. It’s like a huge wart on my forehead. Everyone can see it, so I might as well acknowledge it, and everyone needed to know the extent of my computer illiteracy to be helpful. Pretending you know more than you do is a time-waster and I’ve found it’s better to be honest about my ignorance in a learning environment.
I picked Inform because it’s a parser tool and because I thought it was possible I could learn the natural language thing. The jury’s still out on that. One day maybe I’ll learn Twine, but with the upcoming choice-based tools in Inform, I might not have to.
Q: Of Their Shadows Deep is not a traditional “text adventure,” but it does adopt many structural elements that, at least on the surface, appear to draw from the well of traditional tropes from that style. Among these are: a multi-room map, an NPC animal, a light puzzle, a secret door and find-the-tool puzzle. How much of this structural analogy was consciously chosen, and why?
AW: I love traditional text adventures, but my favorite games usually take them to new places, like Short and DiBianca do. That’s the goal: to make text adventures that have more to them than just solving puzzles in a story-light environment. So it was all very consciously done that way.
Q: You have spoken before about the deeply personal nature of the subject matter of Of Their Shadows Deep. Did you feel that it was risky to release this game? If so, what convinced you to take the plunge and take the risk of sharing that with the general public? Is there anything that you would offer as advice to other writers who want to do something similar?
AW: It didn’t feel very risky, because I’m pretty immune to failure and criticism. I spent many years as a research biologist and that’s a job that trains you to fail with acceptance. And I’ve been a working artist for years and the amount of criticism in that gig is just stunning. So the idea of putting out a stinker of a game, even if it personally means a lot to me, isn’t that terrifying. The only way to feel less fragile about failure is to fail and get up again, so I encourage people to embrace the possibility or the reality of failure until they get used to it. There’s no other way. No matter how well you do your art, there will always be people who don’t like it and who will tell you so. And the biggest reason to take those leaps is that if you never take a risk, you’ll never do anything truly creatively innovative.
Q: Noted Infocom author Amy Briggs recently said in an interview shared on this forum that if she were to write any more interactive fiction, it would probably deal with dementia. Specifically: “I’d probably write something about my mother’s trip/journey [with] dementia, and how it affected me as a caregiver. I think there’s a whole world that people talk about about caregiving that, unless you’ve done it, you don’t really know what it is.” Would you say that your inspiration to write Of Their Shadows Deep was similar?
AW: Yes. Dementia is the worst thing. Watching it take my mother down was soul-crushing, and being her primary caregiver was an awful, scary, gross, miserable experience. I was trying so hard to find some grace or acceptance there. So I wrote a game pretending that I had found it and hoped I could convince myself that was true. It wasn’t, though. Still, it was a good effort to talk myself into a better mindset.
Q: Which of your games are you most proud of, and why?
AW: The first one! I didn’t really believe I could do it, and it was so amazing that I could-- with a giant support staff, of course. I think one of the reasons it did so well was that it was such a team effort to get it off the ground. So many people here had a stake in it.
Q: You have another game, The Spectators, that will be competing in Division 3 next week. Is there anything you would like to say about it before its first match?
AW: I hope it doesn’t go up against Spider and Web.
Q: Of Their Shadows Deep seems to be designed to be relatively easy to play through, with features like a built-in map and strong hints for relatively easy riddles. Why did you design it this way? Was it to place the emphasis on the emotional journey presented by the game?
AW: Yes, absolutely. OTSD is a riddle game, and you just can’t have hard riddles for a whole game, or players will get stuck and will quit. You don’t want to make your players feel dumb. The important thing was the writing and the journey, not doing gotcha stuff with players. So I made it as gentle as I could so that people would play the thing. I set aside a lot of games when I get stuck, and then I get distracted by shiny new games and never return to many of them. I don’t want that to be the fate of my games.
Q: The depiction of the cat is very life-like. Do you have a cat? Is the cat in the game modeled after it or any other particular cat?
AW: We don’t have a cat, and we’re dog people, actually. But I needed a companion in the game that would begin and end it and allow me to do some shameless emotional manipulation with it, and a cat was the better choice. A slobbery bouncing dog would not have the same mystique.
Q: Did you construct the “images” in the game yourself?
AW: Yes. Although later I realized I had accidentally done a fairly good job of copying the cat’s basic shape from the poet John Hollander, who wrote a fantastic book of concrete poems that I read maybe 20 years ago. It must really have stuck in my subconscious. It wasn’t intentional and I keep meaning to go back and tweak the cat a bit, although it’s hard to see another way to do a cat shape well in words. I’m pretty sure the rest are all me and not John Hollander, though.