Artifice

Artifice was created as an adaptation of a short story I had previously written and was created with the goal of changing the story to make it better fit an interactive medium. My hope was also to express the personality and outlook of the protagonist clearly through the narration. It was important to me that players get a strong sense of who the protagonist is as a character through her actions, with dialogue only when necessary. In order to convey a strong sense of character and because it was adapted from a linear story, choices are sometimes limited.

This is also my first project using Twine, so it served as a way to experiment with the systems and their possibilities. I used variables and if / else statements to determine if the character should die in various scenarios or if certain lines of dialogue should appear, and Twine’s story stylesheet to change the aesthetics of the game.

The theme of the project was deception, which I attempted to convey through the narration’s frequent lies about the protagonist’s mortality. This represents the character’s self deception, convincing herself that she is immortal.