LunchTimeWaster: The Joy Of Text

The Experimental Gameplay Project consistently produces some of the more intriguing examples of indie design. This real-time text adventure, for want of a better term, comes from their “Bare Minimum” challenge.

It’s called Ergon/Logos, and as the Latin Greek (It’s all Greek to me – Ed) title suggests, it’s a nexus of action and speech. The story begins with a sentence scrolling across the screen before forking time and time again, looping back around and cutting back through earlier passages.

You read along, guiding the prose to a conclusion by simply moving the mouse in the direction you wish to follow. As you’d expect, the layout and typography reflect the meaning of the text. It’s interesting, and with more time devoted to the writing (there’s a strict time limit on these EGP challenges), there’s much potential here for a new mode of interactive fiction.

Ergon/Logos [Paolo Pedercini]