The life of Mr. Bumpy Lumps

I don’t have this idea as fleshed out as I would like it to but the idea is pretty simple. You have very minimal control over this lifeless stuffed animal and this child and world interact with this little bear, often treating it as alive. The choices you make are subtle and do not directly control the stuffed animal because it is of course lifeless. I would love to have interesting illustrations for this story that I make myself but I currently don’t have any that are worthwhile using.

Mr. Bumpy Lumps is sitting quietly on a shelf in a bright pink room. Black glass eyes stare widely at the open door and a huge grin is set on his face welcoming anyone who enters the room. Far off in the distance the indistinct murmurings of a little girl’s voice can be heard from somewhere outside of the room. The window above the shelf is open and a strong wind begins to seep into the room.

>> The wind tips Mr. Bumpy Lumps over off the shelf.

>> The wind shuts the door.

>> Nothing happens.

This wouldn’t really be an enthralling story but I thought it might be a unique way to approach a story.

 

For my second idea I was possibly thinking of taking the context of the choices completely out of the story. So the reader would choose a bunch of seemingly random choices at the beginning and then the story is revealed and as they read on they can see how their choices made a difference in the story. In a way it is playing with the idea of taking the control out of the readers hands in which interactive stories are known in giving. I did not think that visuals would be necessary for a story like this and I am also at a loss at what the story would actually be. Off the top of my head it would be a story of a little girl who has lost her teddy (I like teddy bears okay!! Gosh!) and goes around this unearthly city in search of it. She interacts with a multitude of characters during this search and the reader unknowingly does stuff to them since they were not given the choice in context.

CYOA:  As far as the readings went I tried to briefly look at all of them but I was most attracted to CYOA most likely because it was not a white onslaught of pdfs. As a visual person I was very grateful for the straightforward and simple visuals that accompanied the text and made it easier to read because of the brief breaks. The reading itself I thought was mildly interesting and I felt as though it covered it’s bases as far as history and thoughts altogether about interactive stories. I also thoroughly enjoyed the animations and galleries of the visual choice paths. It was fun to see the choices taken out of the story and plotted in an appealing way.

7 comments
  1. I really like the idea that the random irrelevant choices made early on have unexpected and even surprising consequences for the reader! After the reader starts to pick up on that I’m sure they’ll replay a number of times just to see the obscure network of events based upon their seemingly random decisions. Good idea!

  2. I like the idea of indirectly controlling an inanimate object, but I think a teddy bear would be limited in its ability to interact with a variety of people. You could give your project more scope by choosing an object that an entire family would use (rather than just the child), like a remote or car keys.

  3. I think the little girl works better as a benevolent demi-god / vicious tyrant in the story than as a protagonist. The implementation of the teddy bear narrative is clever, but I don’t see the story as being particularly interesting so I don’t think that I can see this being as fun to play. That said, I do enjoy the idea of you not knowing what your choices do, especially if the consequences are delayed.

  4. The second idea seems more unique to me, by far. It’s interesting how the interactive elements of the narrative are all pushed to the beginning instead of scattered, but I wonder about the satisfaction level of a player who’s forced to just read a load of text after they’ve made all the choices they can. Makes me wonder about the amount of freedom THROUGHOUT the game. Really focus on your story, it must be exciting and gripping.

  5. I really like both ideas and I think you may be able to find a way to combine them. It could be that instead of the bear sitting in the girl’s bedroom, that the bear is somewhere else, having the world and people interact with it and the little girl is looking for it. You could switch between providing choices with the user as the girl and as the world around the teddy bear and have the user make a number of choices that don’t make sense until the end – maybe you don’t even know the little girl is looking for the teddy bear until the end.

  6. I like the idea of making all the choices before you know what they’re going to do or what the significance of particular things is. That could be pretty cool.

  7. The second idea is much more interesting and reminds me of mad libs although they are clearly unrelated other than the fact that you make all your choices in the beginning. I think it’s an interesting exploration into how the small choices one makes affects the future in subtle ways.

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