Your World According to a Single Word

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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 2 Write a review

I really, really, like pieces taking human experiences and flipping it on its head by viewing it from an outsider perspective (aliens/other). It's always a bit strange and uncomfortable, to look at this from a non-human POV, but it also makes you think about the things we take for granted. You know... the little every day things that are actually pretty awesome.

Here, a word - Hypertext (harr, harr) - takes over your body for a month to experience what it's like to be human, and recounts its experiences with you through the medium of Hypertext Kinetic IF (though it reaaallly wanted to make a parser instead). I liked the attention to details, like what's in your bed room, especially the closet and the bookcase, or the ways different bits connect together (the colours and images especially). In trying to explain the wonders (and less wondrous aspects) of human life, Hypertext engages in the debate of how best to communicate things with others, pulling its "hair" at the backward way that is text.

The entry is very strange, but also quite endearing, and I enjoyed the meta/philosophical discussion about the use of words, their meaning, and whether we should turn to other, maybe better, ways to communicate with others.
I could have done maybe without the whole physical relationship passage. That made me a bit uncomfortable.

It was a very good entry!

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This game has a bit of a different setup between the reader and the protagonist.

The narrative voice of the game is a sentient word. It addresses 'you', but 'you' doesn't mean the reader, it means a person in college that the word traded bodies with for a month.

The word is intrigued and obsessed with the human world, especially with things like color and visual stimuli.

The concept is clever, and there is a lot of enthusiasm that comes across as appropriate for a visitor from another world.

The longer it went on, the more I saw it as the story of someone who truly despises what they are; someone who does not like themself whatsoever. Because the word likes text least of all; it doesn't enjoy visual things more, it actively despises text.

There were two things that were a little weird about my interaction with the game. The first is that I felt like it was apologizing for itself a lot, which is weird because do you as a reader agree with it that it's non-ideal or feel sympathy for it? The second is that there was a wide range of interactivity which never fell into a rhythm for me; it went from wild combinatorial explosion to mostly linear.

Overall, I think it's a solid concept and that the game is just the right length for what it's exploring. I didn't click with all of it, but I did like parts and others might like all.

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