Baby’s first ECTOCOMP! I want to thank everyone who organized, played, rated, reviewed, and especially entered their own work. I played all the English-language games (plus stumbled through Maria les campanilles with Google Translate close at hand) and had a great time. Also, a special shoutout to my testers @Draconis and @manonamora for their gracious feedback so close to the deadline.
I’m astonished to have taken seventh place in the English Le Grand Guignol (“the English the” yes okay Sideshow Bob), and would have been astonished even by the twelfth-place finish from the raw scores I more likely deserved. There were so many incredible games, and I feel very much as if I’ve gotten away with something I shouldn’t have.
Anyway, since a lot of the reactions to your life, and nothing else were (very kind!) variations of this, I’m going to talk through some of my thoughts and intentions. Spoilers, needless to say, and maybe skip the second section if seeing too much of how the sausage was made would ruin the effect.
Inspiration and process
The initial idea for your life, and nothing else came to me in September. Despite all the ancient Greek and Abrahamic symbolism in the finished product, the spark was something I read in a book on Buddhism about samsara and nirvana being one and the same.
From there, my brain skipped sideways away from suffering and enlightenment in life, death, or rebirth, on to different afterlives as sort of overlapping quantum states. What if heaven and hell were to exist in the same place, with a limbo where you perceive both a bit but neither fully? I put that thought in my notes, and it seemed like a suitably horrifying concept to develop for ECTOCOMP once it rolled around.
By the time I started writing your life, it had been more than two years since I released my first IF The Deluge. I’ve worked on several other IF projects in the meantime, but they’ve all fallen victim to a lovely combo of scope creep, perfectionism, and a more general sense of burnout. In entering ECTOCOMP, I was determined to finish something, anything, without giving myself time to second-guess it too much. I even meant to do it for La Petite Mort at first, but it quickly became clear that wasn’t happening, especially once I realized I was going to be using a different Twine format than planned, haha whoops
It’s probably inevitable that I feel like your life is a bit of a sophomore slump. The Deluge has more room for player exploration and agency, a more developed setting and narrative, and just generally hangs together better (also: nicer styling and a soundtrack). I feel like I largely got to do what I wanted with your life, though: be creepy and unsettling, play with atmosphere and suggestion, experiment with new effects, and most importantly, just make the thing.
Symbolism – WTF is going on?
So, yeah, it’s an afterlife, or some afterlives. I kind of threw a lot of spaghetti at the wall to hint at that, and was probably pretty hamhanded about it. Things like a pomegranate dropped into the pile of fruit or the name on the building entrance are obviously relevant.
The greater challenge proved to be hinting around the nature of this specific afterlife: into the dullness of your surroundings comes a blast of heat or a lovely breeze, sublime music or sobbing from somewhere you can’t place. Your shower can be cozy, disappointing, or excruciating, or all three in a row if you decide you’re bored with this dull-ass building and want to have a hygiene party. The kitchen looks soulless, but smells both delectable and kind of disgusting (hint: nobody is cooking as many eggs as you think).
The recurring theme of the Magic Eye stereogram posters is also a nod toward seeing things beneath the surface if you choose to focus, which in general it seems like you’re not that interested in doing, being apathetic toward your reflection, most food, and more than a few basic interactions. I don’t love the Magic Eye symbolism as much in hindsight. It probably would have been better to use something where you’re expected to be able to see more than one different thing, rather than a set image. But hey, stereograms are tricky anyway, so maybe you do?
Of course, the PC can’t avoid the truth forever. The building expands improbably to house new residents. Your visits to your neighbors keep getting more unsettling. Other sensations creep in around the edges. Cue the endgame, where the reality of all states at once crashes in. (Despite the horrifying imagery, this, of course, is not fully hell; there’s a lot of BE NOT AFRAID going on.)
So: you’re in the Medium Place, and the Good Place, and the Bad Place, and no one is waiting to snap their fingers and reset things for you. That’s where the water dispenser comes in. As @kamineko picked up on, it’s a Lethe allusion. Your very first quest for your mournful neighbor foreshadows the end and, perhaps, your perpetual fate: are you all just in an endless cycle of forgetting as much as you’re able to, knowing you’ll never be able to make a decision without knowing the ugly truth about your joy, or resenting your suffering that much more?
And yes, several reviewers spotted the No Exit/Huis clos parallels. The game’s title is cribbed from (an English translation of) one of Inez’s lines, though admittedly recontextualized. I wanted something that might read on the surface as aggressively normal, in line with the blandness of the game’s beginnings, while also being a little Easter egg reference.
Related to another often-misunderstood quote from the same play: I think the PC’s relationships with other characters might have read to some as less mutual and more transactional than intended. The danger of too many fetch quests, I guess. Again, though, this is not (only) hell, and I’m not quite that cynical about human nature. I’ll counter with: your neighbors are self-centered and demanding at times. They also welcome you without fail, even when it doesn’t seem to be a good time, even when you have nothing to offer. And, after all, it isn’t strangers caring for and carrying you at the end. Hell may be (being perceived by!) other people, but in another sense, if you’re really seen, heaven can be too.
What I wish I’d done differently
- I hold to the belief that it’s far better to underexplain than overexplain in horror. There is a line, though, and I might have tap-danced on it a bit. I’m probably overcompensating now.
- curate the symbolism just a bit, buddy
- It seems like some reviewers found the transition from “unbearable dullness” to “WHAT IS HAPPENING” a bit too abrupt, and for what it’s worth, I agree. I tried to really bump up the unsettling interactions on day 3, but I wonder if it might have been worth adding more scenes of “otherness” leaking through and/or another day of exploration without any expected tasks, though the latter might have bogged things down too much.
- The endings feel a bit shambolic to me. It’s not easy to nail down “second-person depiction of existential terror, followed by induced amnesia” in a way that both conveys the PC’s disorientation and stays clear enough to the player, as it turns out. I tried to call back to previous scenes that the player can recall even if the PC can’t, but it’s all too easy to overlook that you, as the author, have seen those passing mentions many more times than the player.
tl;dr: making this was fun and I hope you enjoyed it, if you did please play my other game because it’s better, ok I love you bye