Next I played “The Olive Tree” by Francesco Giovannangelo, a story told from the perspective of a Palestinian olive tree, a tree variety known for its incredible longevity. Olive trees can live for hundreds if not thousands of years. This one lasts only just short of a century, but that is still longer than any one of the family members who take care of it, and that family is who the story is really about.
The “game” aspect of this piece is a resource management simulation, although the game in this case exists entirely to support the story, a beautiful heartbreaking story about this Palestinian family: their lives, their loves, their struggles, and losses over several decades of expanding Israeli occupation. The optimization game serves this story well, highlighting the fragility of life itself, and the struggle (of a tree, or of a people) to just survive, let alone produce flowers and fruit. In years of drought, it is almost impossible to give the tree the water it needs. Toward the end it is possible to produce a crop of olives. But by its nature and setting, this story is a tragedy.
Regarding now on the story’s use of Vorple. I haven’t experienced very many games written with Vorple, which is a tool to incorporate JavaScript and CSS styling into a parser game. Vorple is applied to good effect in this game, incorporating graphics, sound, and customized fonts to uniquely style all aspects of the player’s experience in support of the story.