Task 5: Twine Task

I hope you enjoy my first attempt at Twine in my story, The Classroom Mystery ( To open, copy link address into a new browser tab to force a download of the zip file).

After reviewing the interactive Twine game, The Temple of No I felt excited to begin creating my own story in Twine. The idea of hypertext isn’t new to me because I have used it to embed links within documents, emails, and interactive slides for students. However, when beginning my journey with Twine, I didn’t fully realize that I would be starting from scratch versus a document where I click the ‘link’ button and my connections are made. 

Bolter mentions that when we use hyperlinks, we can think of the links as “a path through a virtual space and the reader becomes a visitor or traveler in that space” (p. 29). My story was inspired by my love for escape rooms and choose your own adventure stories I read as a kid. What I love about both of these experiences is that your path relies on the decisions you make. In using Twine, I wanted to draw on these experiences for my user to fully emerge in the process of choice. I also related to how Douglas’ (1963) discussion of how a designer would have to “learn how to view, to measure, to analyze, and to evaluate in terms of the functional whole and its purpose” (Section B). To create a compelling hypertext story in Twine, I needed to understand what combination of symbols and text were required to be put together for the result to be visually appealing. 

Once I understood the process, it was time to create a storyboard to plan my hypertext routes. I started this in Twine but then got stuck and did not have consistency between panels. So I switched my planning phase to pencil and paper, which worked well. I was able to see all at one time the road map of where I wanted to go. Once back in Twine, the story flowed together much better, and I found adding things in much easier because it still followed my general plan. Like planning a teaching unit, I quickly learned that having the end in mind was key to my success. Another aspect I thought necessary in my story was the use of visuals. Although tedious, I figured out how to embed images and gif’s into my story, and I think this enhanced the overall feel of the adventure. 

If I were to use Twine again to create a story, I would want to learn more about how to add sound clips to enhance the story further. That being said, I did enjoy using Twine and I definitely see the potential for how this could be used with students in a classroom. 

References:

Bolter, J.D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 27-46.

Englebart, Douglas. (1963). “A conceptual framework for the augmentation of man’s intellect. ” In Hawerton, P.W. and Weeks, D.C. (Eds.), Vistas in information handling, Volume I: The augmentation of man’s intellect by machine. Washington, DC: Spartan Books. Available (as “Augmentation of human intellect: A conceptual framework”)