With Those We Love Alive (Charity Heartscape, 2014) is a work of interactive fiction (IF) by Porpentine Charity Heartscape. The work invites us to make choices that affect the story but also to mark our own bodies, turning ourselves into text. This review highlights how the power of With Those We Love Alive (WTWLA) accrues from its simultaneous simplicity and ambition.

(Charity Heartscape, 2014)

At the start, we are told nothing we can do is wrong, but this consolation is quickly undermined by what follows. You are in service to a monstrous Empress. Your days involve creating horrifying objects and passively observing nightmarish scenes. Relief comes with the arrival of a friend and the possibility of escape. So far, so simple, but the experience of WTWLA could not be reproduced in print, a defining feature of IF (Rettberg, 2020, p.5).

Firstly, music creates multimodality and directs our emotional response. Although built from simple loops, the music, in concert with the colour-shifting backgrounds, often signifies a modulation of mood and deepens moments of drama and relief. These modalities are reminiscent of film and create an immersive experience.

(Charity Heartscape, 2014)

(Charity Heartscape, 2014)

The world of WTWLA initially appears ‘open’ as we select options for our character, freely visit different places, and choose to sleep or meditate. Indeed IF tests are often partly constructed by the reader (Allan, 2017). However, this agency is illusory. Ensslin (2014, pp. 79-83) analysed how The Path (Harvey & Samyn, 2009) deceives readers whilst also drawing attention to the conventions of authorial control. It feels similar here. At points, we are forced in a particular direction. At others, the choices are false, all being equally unwelcome. We may feel WTWLA deploys a “top down” (Hayles, 2008, p17) model of interactivity, where choices are constrained by the author. Yet this also supports themes of control and coercion. Additionally, by organising the text with compulsory scenes, the author creates a sense of narrative structure, raising WTWLA’s literary value.

Porpentine deploys a range of techniques with clickable links. Text either takes us to a new “lexia” (Pressman, 2008) or can be customised from a set of options. Sometimes clicking removes words, used powerfully in one sequence where this effectively ‘heals’ the friend. There are also “stretchtexts” (Rettberg, 2020, p. 108) where interaction reveals a new passage on the current screen. The pace of reading is further controlled with differing text lengths or managed by timing delays and blank screens. Again, we can see Porpentine managing the narrative but strengthening the literary experience.

Literary merit is also present in the descriptive language. Porpentine creates surprising and poetic adjective and noun combinations. Several objects and places in WTWLA such as a disappearing knife and the dream distillery, appear designed as symbols or metaphors. The narrative voice is unstable in interesting ways that suggest themes. The text uses the second person voice conventional in interactive fiction (Rettberg, 2020, p. 90) but also adopts an imperative tone telling us what to think or feel and alternating between seeming approval and distaste of Empress, even, at times appearing to comment from ‘outside’ the narrative. More than being great games, Rettberg (2020, p. 100) suggests that IF works succeed when they are well-written. Porpentine’s “dark existential poetry” (Rettberg, 2020, p. 108) may not be to everyone’s taste but is ripe for analysis.

Readers could ‘complete’ WTWLA in under two hours, especially if they don’t explore, which could be a criticism. Certainly, WTWLA lacks the multilinear aspect of varying endings Rettberg (2020, p. 99) praises in Galatea (Short, 2012): the only options are isolating escape or morally compromised submission. However, this digestibility makes the work an ideal introduction to IF.  Similarly, it does not require text input, thereby avoiding the frustrations of such interfaces noted by Rettberg (2020, p.98).

Regarding accessibility, WTWLA is playable for free, without a download and has a version for colourblind users. Built on Twine, a platform credited with reigniting interest in IF by adding a modern gaming sensibility (Rettberg, 2020, p109), WTWLA arguably leverages the status of games as the dominant form of narrative in contemporary culture (Rettberg, 2020, p. 87) and appealing to those that dislike books.

(Charity Heartscape, 2014)

WTWLA’s themes of ethics and love have cross-subject appeal. Within literature, the text could be read as fantasy or dystopia.  A political or philosophical reading could be supported by other digital texts such as Papers, Please (Pope, 2013) which also explores complicity and suggests links to real totalitarian regimes. The imaginative step into marking our physical bodies takes the work into the realm of art.

In conclusion, the rich simplicity of WTWLA makes it a perfect introduction to IF for older teens. Teachers should also find the literary, artistic, and ludic appeal factors provide multiple points of interest for a wide range of readers.

References

Allan, C. (2017). Digital fiction: ‘Unruly object’ or literary artefact? English in Australia, 52(2), 21-27.

Charity Heartscape, P. (2014) With those we love alive. https://xrafstar.monster/games/twine/wtwla/

Ensslin, A. (2014). Chapter 5: Playing with rather than by the rules: Metaludicity, allusive fallacy, and illusory agency in The Path. In A. Bell, A. Ensslin & H. K. Rustad (Eds), Analyzing digital fiction (pp. 75–93). Routledge.

Hayles, N. K. (2008). Electronic literature: New horizons for the literary. University of Notre Dame Press.

Harvey, A., & Samyn, M. (2009). The path. Tale of tales. https://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath/

Pope, L. (2013). Papers, please [Game]. 3909 LLC

Pressman, J. (2008). Navigating electronic literature. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. https://newhorizons.eliterature.org/essay.php@id=14.html

Rettberg, S. (2020). Electronic literature. Polity Press.

Short, E. (2012). Galatea. The interactive fiction database. https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=urxrv27t7qtu52lb