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The Clock Village: an Interactive Fiction Experience

April 24, 2023

Experiencing, Fiction, Programming

fiction, game, programming, text adventure, video games

The Clock Village, my latest programming project, is first and foremost an interactive fiction experience. Only nominally could one also call it a modern text adventure game, like my earlier Mansion Escape.

In other words, though in this process as a “player” you move around, engage in interactive dialogues, collect and use items, and try to increase the score that will let you get a “better” ending, I prefer to see The Clock Village as something more artistic.

Perhaps it’s a philosophical exploration of self. Or maybe a short interactive reflection of our innermost existential anxieties. Maybe, like true art, it simply is what its experiencer wants it to be

interactive fiction clock village game screen
This is the main screen of the interface. I don’t want to call it “game”; it’s interactive fiction
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Expectations vs Reality, Writer-Style

April 17, 2023

Writing

book, creativity, fiction, literature, social masses, society, writing

So, you too want to “become a writer”, right? You’re in good company! You and another 5 billion people apparently want the same. But this, too, is a club where expectations and reality don’t quite match.

Inspiration for this post came when Alicia, a friend of the blog, shared with me a map that shows what is the dream job of people by location. As you have perhaps guessed it, people from Finland to Algeria and from India to Trinidad & Tobago answered that their dream job is writer. Other popular choices were “pilot” and “influencer” or “youtuber”.

As someone who has experience of… one and a half of those professions, I feel it’s important to talk a bit about the “expectations vs reality” factor of our choices.

The key takeaway here is, we are very often attracted to certain activities and we’d like to make money out of them. That we enjoy doing them is precisely the reason why we should never attempt to bring money into the picture – or, in any case, not so before we fully realize the repercussions of such an action.

expectations vs reality
“You are special, just like everybody else”
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Accidental Creativity: The Undead Muse

April 10, 2023

Experiencing, Writing

creativity, experiencing, fiction, Gothic, music, writing

First things first: The Undead Muse is the title of my most recent music album that, like the rest of the music that I make, is an exploration of postrock and postmetal music. As the title of the album reveals, there are Gothic elements in there – Gothic fiction, that is; not Gothic metal! We’ll talk about all that too, but there is another focus in this post: what I term accidental creativity.

Many writers will likely relate to the concept of accidental creativity, and will immediately understand what I’m getting at. Still, here’s a quick definition: I use the term accidental creativity to refer to artistically creating something that isn’t what you intended.

We’ll need to further revise this – and include some philosophical speculation; for instance, is there anything but accidental creativity? And allow me this little indulgence of combining this with a presentation of this newest album, which I really enjoyed making and really enjoy listening to.

accidental creativity
Album art of The Undead Muse
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