Tweeting Scared: Choose your own Twitter Adventure

You might believe that Twitter is only a platform for sharing opinions better left unknown, the over-use of ‘hashtags’ and slang terms like ‘bae’, but it could become a new platform for the casual gamer too. And, though Terence Eden’s Choose your own Adventure (CyoA) game is not the first on Twitter, it may well spur on many more of its kind.

For those of you who might not know, CyoAs have traditionally been presented as interactive fiction books where you, the reader, assume the role of the protagonist. Upon being given a scenario and various actions, you are encouraged to make a choice which will either send you further into the game, where you must make more choices, or write you off completely. The goal is to find your own ending and thus ‘personalise’ the game rather than encounter a prescribed ending, as is the norm for most videogames. Is your interest piqued, yet? Read on.

Instead of presenting the CyoA in book form, Eden elected to use Twitter instead, following the path of at least two others before him. But it is clear that he diverges from there. While the two preceding CyoAs employ links which redirect the player to various tweets on the same handle, allowing those with little patience to scroll through the scenarios and various endings, Eden has used 23 different handles instead, linking them together through the @Mention function.

Your heart beats so loudly, you’re sure they’ll hear. An hour passes. Wait: @wnd_time Look around: @wnd_no

— Fear itself fears me (@wnd_fear) January 11, 2015

They show you no mercy. The pain is indescribable. — Soon (@wnd_soon) January 11, 2015

Not only does this remove the possibility of anticipating various outcomes through scrolling down a profile, it also allows Eden to customise each profile to fit the scenarios presented, with the option to add more at any time. From a glance, it is clear that not only does he make the game more accessible to mobile users than before, but also more interesting and even challenging.

According to his blog, Eden’s game was intended to be a ‘teaser trailer’ for a novel, The Wanderer, but, as I have never heard of it, let alone read it before this, it’s safe to say I can’t evaluate whether it was an accurate representation of that. What I can say, is that this explains the little concept preceding the start of the game; the Choose your own Adventure deals with an ominous ‘They’ chasing after you, whom you must escape, giving very little information beyond that. As simple as it is, it does seem to work.

It is worth mentioning, though, that using Twitter does have its drawbacks; Eden is limited by the number of characters he can utilise in each tweet, meaning there is little he can do to really set up a scene. His use of different profiles helps convey the setting but, with the occasional nonsensical title and unsettling use of medieval art, it’s hard to say whether this helps. Regardless, this feeds into the confusion and suspense of the situations presented, providing enough intrigue to encourage players to go on and read the book, as intended.

Despite its limited number of scenarios, they interlink enough to make it near impossible to discover them all – at least, I haven’t – and, while you might not want to spend hours on it, you can replay it without getting the same result each time. Plus, the use of Twitter in its entirety means you can play it comfortably on the mobile app without wanting to throw your phone across the room. So, for someone looking to ‘kill’ some time before a lecture, this might just be the way to do it!

Want to try out Terence Eden’s Twitter Adventure? You can start below!

They’re here. Oh god! They’ve found you! Run: @wnd_run Hide: @wnd_hide

— A dreadful start (@wnd_go) January 11, 2015

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Follow Terence Eden at @edent, and Boar Games at @BoarGames