The Grouper
A Twine story written By Bryce summers.
An eclectic, frenetic tale of interconnections and synthesized possibilities.
Online Project: Link to Project online.
Instructions : Click story links to transverse the splendid story!
This twine assignment was made in fulfillment of Assignment 1.
Story Structure:
I managed to skip categorizing a couple people from just remembering the realms. I’m not sure if that’s intentional, so I can’t strictly say I have an understanding of the intent behind this story. I liked the initial novelty of taking the role of a abstract concept of classification, but the fact that I physically position these characters in space (realm vs other realm) rather than conceptually kind of killed the novelty. That’s just my personal taste though.
I did enjoy the writing style overall, and finding different interaction between the characters was fun. I don’t think the underlying existential theme really gel-ed the the story or mechanics though, and to a degree conflicted with each other. Preordainment, with regard to how they interact and your references to it, and existentialism are kind of opposites.
I had one technical issue: the purple person ended up in a place I didn’t put him. This take on choice was really clever in giving the player all of the agency possible in the universe. You weren’t just a dude picking from choices given to you by a dude higher up. You were the ultimate dude. Yet, as commented on in the game, you’re choices are rather arbitrary. You assign all the emotional weight to the characters, not the events of the story. It’s not your fault that something bad happened, it’s your fault for feeling bad about something bad that happened. Sometimes the breaks in the fourth wall aided this (when the narrator speaks on arbitrariness) and sometimes they didn’t do it for me (the initial false start page.)
I found the same issue as Ralph: “remembering” realms would skip placement of certain characters in them.
Other than that, it was a clever concept, though a bit lacking in execution. On my first playthrough, due to the unclear distinction between “Realm” and “Other Realm,” I ended up arbitrarily assigning locations. On my second, I simply grouped all characters in the same realm to try to maximize “news” and happenings. Putting different characters in the same place was interesting in the interactions between them, but other than that didn’t seem to affect the overall structure. Perhaps this could be rectified with a greater purpose: why am I categorizing people, and how does that affect me?
This was a great way to use the features twine gives you to create something with a lot of agency but still resulted in a linear story. I also managed to avoid categorizing people, and again, this didn’t have an effect on the storyline. By the second playthrough it seemed liked you were picking people to place on your “team” since you know that you can choose where both yourself and other people end up. I have yet to fully understand the function of remembering another realm — this seems disadvantageous rather than advantageous which is counter intuitive. Again, though congrats on the ending — and the monstrously self aware ending.
For me there’s an interesting meta-choice in this game: on what standards to you judge individuals to go to which realm? You’ve managed to make a totally open-ended question out of a series of binary questions, which is really special, especially when compounded with having to judge yourself near the end. Not sue if it’s a bug, but I was able to remove the Purple Person from the game by hitting ‘I remember the Realm’ when it was his turn for judgement. You’ve clearly put care into considering how the individuals interact and I appreciate that.
– as commented on before, remembering realm/other realm would skip over the person, which made me sad as it felt like the traveler was lost to the void
– enjoyed the writing style, especially the different interactions that would happen among the travelers
This was a perplexing and intricate approach to playing the divine in a game. The characters all had traits that reminded me of people in my life, sometimes this made me smile, other times it made me sad when they left the story. I distinctly have a grudge against glutton for the sick things he did to ms. cupcake… Your writing was fluid and perplexing at first, but once I understood the outline of the pages the game came together for me. Interesting that ther is no direct good or bad realm, just two separate ones filled with different types of individuals.
I found that after a few turns the purple people eater and sonny boy were not where I had placed them. I like the idea of trying to separate a group of people such that they are all satisfied, and what I hope is the futility in the attempt to do so. Did you make it so you can’t have everyone be happy? I also enjoyed trying to thing the numbers as much as possible.
I’m confused. Who’s Papa John? What is he doing this mystical realm? Is Mamma Mia his mother? Is the Flying Purple Eater there to consume them both? Are they actually people, or are they just arbitrary text on a screen? Who is “You?” Am I You? Are you You? Is You even real? Is anything real?
(Long story short: you’ve done a splendid job of making a paradoxical set of nether realms that make no sense. I think that’s what you were aiming for, and you’ve succeeded magnificently;)
Developer Updates
—————–
Hello All! I have fixed those character skipping bugs, it turns out I had forgotten to reset the story progression variables whenever a player reads some of the side story for the characters.
Did anybody get to of discover either of the two endings? They both explain what is going on at the **end** of the pages.
By the way if you find that your characters are migrating, that is not a bug. They have agency as well.
I have removed the false start page, because it seems like the story only displays error messages on my local computer, but is fine when run on the internet.
Sincerely,
Bryce