Post-mortem: WATT
** My scrappy attempt at constructing a post-mortem
To start I’d like to thank everyone who played our game WATT.
This project is a first for me in many ways. It’s the first year I actually sat down to learn the Twine engine properly. Before this, I had only experimented with more traditional engines like Godot or Unity and making a purely text-based game was new territory.
In April this year, I published my first small Twine game, and from then until August, I decided to go all in– learning how to branch stories, create text effects, and use JavaScript to deepen the player’s experience (and all that music stuff for Harlowe). WATT had actually been a long-standing idea of mine since around 2022 or 2023, when I was still in university. It began as part of my undergraduate research project, inspired by a course on Theatre of the Absurd.
I fell in love with absurdism then, not just because it explores the futility of existence, but because beneath all that hopelessness lies something strangely hopeful? It the idea of conscious revolt. Camus’ line “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” stayed with me, even though it’s fairly cheesy now and has somewhat become a meme. The Myth of Sisyphus found me at a time when I was questioning the meaning of everything, and it gave me a way to find light in meaninglessness.
So when it came time to create a game, I wanted to merge that love of absurdist literature with my passion for fiction and video games. At first, I imagined WATT as a full RPG (something more visually engaging) but the literature student in me wanted something that challenged my writing instead. Interactive fiction felt like the perfect medium to explore those existential questions while giving players agency in how they experience them.
Originally, we conceptualized eight houses instead of seven, each meant to represent a stage of life. But it was difficult for us, being in our early twenties, to imagine the later decades authentically, so we fused a few ideas together and condensed the narrative. In hindsight, that decision gave the story a stronger sense of essence.
There’s a saying in Chinese, 浓缩的就是精华– “what is condensed is the essence.”
That became something of a guiding principle in how I wrote WATT.
This game’s reception (the love, the constructive criticism, and the community feedback) has been deeply valuable. As first-time entrants, it’s been eye-opening to learn what worked and what didn’t.
Some people found the text effects a bit overwhelming, which is a fair point. Coming from an RPG background, I might’ve gone overboard trying to make the experience visually dynamic. I’ll be more mindful of immersion in future versions. Others felt the pacing in the early parts dragged before the story “clicked.” That, too, was somewhat intentional but I understand how a slow start can turn players away and all. Also the whole thing about getting multiple play testers for the game to ensure that all grounds are covered and no stones were unturned– I’ve learnt how testing your game TO DEATH is of paramount importance.
Despite the challenges, I’m proud of what we achieved, especially considering that many of us are still students or just starting work. I recently began working in public relations, an industry notorious for poor work-life balance, so finding time to create this game outside of my day job has been a small act of rebellion in itself. It’s a luxury to still have the energy to pursue something you love, and I’m grateful my team felt the same.
WATT Actually Is It About?
WATT is, at its core, a metaphor for life. You begin the game with a false start (a deliberate nod to Deltarune lol) before descending into the island as your “true” self, WATT, given a mission you accept without question. Like many of us, he moves through life chasing promises he doesn’t fully understand, never stopping to ask if it’s worth it or what it might cost him.
It’s not strictly religious, though it can be read that way. It’s more about philosophical suicide, as described in Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, the act of surrendering your freedom of thought to something that gives your life meaning, whether that’s religion, ego, love, work, or family. Each “house” in the game explores a different form of this surrender.
(This review by Andrew Schultz managed capture MUCH of the game so I highly recommend giving this a read if you’re a little lost.)
House 1 is that blind beginning and all about that the naive chase for the perfect grade in school
House 2 draws on my personal experiences; I’ll leave it at that (yeah…)
House 3 mirrors the disillusionment of entering the corporate world and the sense of compromise and loss
House 4 takes inspiration from Chinese opera, a part of my cultural upbringing. It reflects the burdens of middle age, especially in Asian societies, where men feel pressure to fulfill endless obligations. The “spotlight effect” and overestimating how much others actually think about us (when they probably don’t and think you judge them the same). This is niche but this part is also inspired by the part “Circe” in James Joyce’s Ulysses where Leopold Bloom started having maladaptive daydreams of himself as a King
House 5 is about self-reflection
House 6, symbolized by the hourglass, confronts mortality and the question of who we long for most as time runs out
House 7 represents the strange burst of clarity and energy that sometimes comes near the end, serving as a final push to complete one’s purpose before fading
Then comes the lighthouse, where the player makes a choice– two possible endings, both of which reflect different shades of acceptance. Many have said both are equally depressing, but I like to think that one offers penance. (Try spelling that word backward; you might notice something)
Closing Thoughts
This has been my first IFComp entry and my first Twine game longer than ten minutes, complete with original art and music. It’s been a GREAT learning journey; albeit exhausting, it was very fulfilling.
I’m also quite pleased (kidding, I’m over the MOON) that one of the lines in my story which I felt was a banger has it’s own discussion post. For me, the true reward of making interactive fiction lies in that fleeting dopamine rush when someone recognizes your effort and finds something of themselves in your work.
No matter how busy life gets, I’m grateful I still get to create, to collaborate, and to tell stories that mean something to me. If WATT has reached even one person in the way absurdism once reached me, then I think that’s enough.
Thank you for playing, for reading, and for being part of this strange, beautiful little revolt.
– Joan
