Free A Game of Murder by Elise M. Stone Page A

kind of game they wanted to write. The two Twine games were short, and Faith completed them rather quickly. The Inform game took her much longer. In fact, Faith wasn’t sure how far into it she progressed before stopping for a bathroom and snack break, because she suspected she hadn’t discovered all the puzzles she needed to solve.
    As Rok had guessed, she preferred the Inform game style. She felt more involved with the game, a feeling of being connected to some other intelligence whom she was battling against, even if the “intelligence” was only a computer program. She’d spent most of her career fighting with computers—and winning—so she felt right at home. In Twine, your choices were limited to what the designer included. In Inform, your choices seemed infinite. The game might not understand what you typed, but it always responded. In fact, some of the responses made her laugh out loud, while others made her pause and think.
    Munching on an oatmeal cookie as she made her way back to her office, she wondered what Mira’s game was like. Instead of going back to the Inform game, she ran a web search for Sartre in Love , the title of Mira’s controversial game. Not surprisingly, Adam’s blog review came up first in the search results. The listings on the rest of the page unsettled her. Those consisted of links to gaming group posts, other bloggers’s responses to Adam’s original review, and Facebook links, most of which were irate tirades against the game from the little she could see. A link to the game itself appeared close to the bottom of the search page.
    She clicked on the link to the game.
    You are standing in the middle of a room. A candle in a brass candlestick with a handle sits at your feet, providing only enough light to see your shoes and a small distance around them. The floor is made of black marble. Outside the cone of light, all is dark.
    > Step forward.
    > Pick up the candlestick.
    Faith had figured out stepping into the dark in text adventures was never a good idea, so she chose the option to pick up the candlestick.
    A voice speaks to you out of the darkness. “I love you, Pat.”
    You hear the roar of a rushing wind approaching.
    > Say “I love you, too.”
    > Step forward.
    One option seemed as good as the other, so Faith clicked on Step forward. Saying I love you to a complete stranger didn’t come naturally to her. She reflected on how long it had taken her to say those words to John.
    You step through a doorway. As the wind roars into the room you left, the door between here and there slams shut behind you. You are alone. An aching emptiness overtakes your soul. You have never been so bereft in your life.
    > Go back.
    > Go forward.
    The mood of the game seeped into Faith’s mind, despair flowing through her and weighing on her chest like an ingot of lead. It appeared leaving the person who loved you was a bad idea.
    She clicked on “Go back”.
    The door has locked behind you. There’s a keyhole, but you have no key to put in it. Hopelessness weighs on your heart.
    > Go forward
    > Knock on the door
    Faith chose to knock on the door.
    No one answers. Either your knock can’t be heard or your true love, heartbroken you did not stay, abandoned all hope of winning your affection. You wonder what you might have missed and if there is any way of getting back to your heart’s desire. Because you know now the person you left is the love of your life. No one could replace that person.
    Faith restarted the game and tried the other option, then went back to her first choice and tried to see if she could find a key or reconcile with “her true love” in any other way. She found several alternate trails, even found the key one time, but the mood of the game remained dark. In true existentialist fashion, there seemed to be no positive outcome to the game.
    She leaned back in her chair, her mind swirling like a whirlpool, the dark atmosphere of the game threatening to drag her under and