Link 3 – Johanna Bolduc’s Task 5 (Twine)
My Task 5 link.
I enjoyed exploring Johanna’s Twine task because I felt like we faced some similar challenges when creating our Twines whereas our final product was quite different.
Johanna’s Twine had a bit of a darker theme. The background was dark while the font colours really popped with the pinks and purples. It was easy to read and caught the eye. Even the picture on the first page of the Twine added to the whole mystery
Another aspect I really enjoyed about Johanna’s ‘Let me tell you who you are’ Twine is how personalized it was. I could put in my name and, seeing as I could choose any answer, I know my results are completely unique to what I write. It is satisfying to know that I am (most likely) the only one who will get the results that I did. Johanna’s aim was “to connect with the player.” To do this, Johanna needed to “work with open-ended answers and variables” which would allow the player to have a unique experience.
All these aspects made Johanna’s Twine different to mine. My theme was more of a children’s book adventure with background pictures. I also only had one set story with no individualized choices. If they selected the ‘wrong’ path, they had to come back and try again until they got it right. The players in my Twine had less freedom than those playing Johanna’s Twine.
One of the similarities was the challenges we faced and how we solved them. We both used online resources to get tips from other Twine users and we both found it challenging to find ways to play around with the font sizes and colours. Johanna referred to how texts can function like images (Bolter, 2001). Their size, font and placement can add to the theme, the overall mood, and the interpretation.
Looking at Johanna’s blog space, I found a pleasing aesthetic. I enjoyed the white writing on black background which differs from my black writing on white background. Similarly, to my blog space, Johanna’s has one set background picture for all pages. My one challenge was finding where to go to access the different tasks without going back one task at a time. I eventually found them in the list of posts, all in one place.
References:
Bolter, J.D. (2001). The breakout of the visual. In Writing spaces: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed., pp. 47-76). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600110