Electronic Literature Collection
New Media Writing Prize (open "archive" to see all works)
Itch.io (home page)
Itch.io (Twine Games)
Itch.io (The Bitsy Essay Jam)
National Film Board of Canada Interactive
The New River Journal (open "archive" to see past works)
The interactive fiction competition

Your task is help build our list of works, including hyperlinks, brief summaries, stars, and tags. As our list grows, we can begin to organize the material differently.

Here's an example:

A Vast and Lonely Desert by Gavin G. See
In this Bitsy game, we travel through empty spaces with a friend making our way toward a campfire and star gazing. The work is about friendship and grief and poetry with a western vibe. It's sparse and powerfully moving for its sparseness.
Info:  made in 2020; serious game; authoring tool: Bitsy; on the Electronic Literature Collection, vol 4 and itch.io
tags: spatiality, navigation, orientation, friendship, loss, LGBTQ
[entry posted by k.kelly]
 
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Hands by Yumehiko
In this game, we travel through abstract arworks and landscapes as a hand who is trying to shake another hand. If you die, more hands spawn to try and aid in the process of reaching the other hand. This alters our perception of the game. It utilizes sound and artwork to create a whimsical atmosphere that is rare in other games. There are no instructions, which makes this more interactive.
Info:  made in 2020; fictional game; authoring tool: Unity, Rider, Photoshop, itch.io
tags: spatiality, whimsical, dreamy, 
[entry posted by Darielle Saintilus]


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My Dream for the Future by FreckledFemme/Erica
In this game, we travel (or rather fly) through a colorfully dark, pixelated landscape as a witch on a broomstick. The work is about one person's story of the struggles associated with both pursuing a teaching career and of coming out as a transgender, and the steps they took to make a better life for themself. The story is told through on-screen dialogue and narration during interactions with other characters or objects and through the story-reflecting background.
Info: made in 2020; "teaching" narrative; authoring tool: Bitsy, itch.io 
Tags: LGBTQ, Teaching, Pixel Art, Coming out, Slice of Life
[entry posted by Christian Chavez]


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Doki Doki Literature Club by Team Salvato
This horror/psychological game works around a group of girls and the main character in a literature club at school. They share poems, conversate, and hang out everyday and generally gives off a harmless vibe. The player chooses which dialogue option to use in each interaction and ultimately decides which person you grow closest to. The endings are all culminations of each of the player's choices which may or may not flip the plot for the worst. 
Info: made in 2017, fictional, game on Steam
Tags: Visual novel, Horror game, Dating sim, Indie game, Adventure game, Bishōjo game
[entry posted by Justin Kim]


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But You Seem Fine by KJAM

In this game, we delve deep into the everyday life of a 14-year-old girl named Rae Kim, navigating a puzzling illness that brings about profound challenges. The narrative revolves around Rae's journey through the intricacies of adolescence and the struggles of her mysterious illness. Players are in Rae’s shoes, immersing themselves in her world, feeling each triumph and setback firsthand. The story unfolds through on-screen dialogue and choices, all culminating in an ending shaped by the player's choices. 

Info: made in 2019, used to inform the audience, game on Android and itch.io

Tags: 2D, Coming Of Age, Cute, Female Protagonist, Meaningful Choices, Singleplayer, Story Rich, Unity
[entry posted by Woojin Ahn] 

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"Confinadventure" is an engaging game that invites players into the life of a person facing the unique challenges of confinement. The game is set during the 2020 global lockdown, the game offers a glimpse into the daily routines and emotional journeys of someone adapting to a new, restricted way of life. The narrative unfolds as players make choices that affect the protagonist's day-to-day activities and overall well-being. Through interactive on-screen dialogue and decision-making, players can shape the storyline, experiencing the highs and lows of confinement.
Info: Developed in 2020, Available on itch.io and Google Play Store
Tags: 2D, Interactive, Decision Making, Singleplayer, Story Rich, Reflective, Life Simulation, Unity
[entry posted by Woojin Ahn]

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Nanopesos by Camilla Gormaz
In this game, it represents the experience of the issues of living in Chile. These problems include the low salaries but high living expenses. I started the game with a minimum wage salary to get the full experience of a worker living in Chile. The game revolves around the experience of a minimum wage worker struggling to keep up with the expenses of living there. The game accurately represents this by having the character constantly having bills appear on the phone, the prices increasing every time the player goes to the supermarket, and the added costs of public transportation and social events. Players are then immersed into these experience that they have not been exposed to before. 
Info: made in 2020, used to inform the audience, game on itch.io
Tags: 2D, Meaningful Choices, Single player 
[entry posted by Nicole Curtis]

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Firewatch by Campo Santo

In this game, you play as man named Henry as he takes a summer job as a fire watcher in Wyoming national park after his wife develops early onset dementia.  You follow Henry as he and another character he meets named Delilah, find ways to live with their grief in their escape in the form of this summer job.  The story deals with escapism and coping with grief, guilt and regret.  The story is mainly told through voice acted dialogue between Henry and Delilah.  The player can't go anywhere they want, but they are allowed a fairly large area to explore relative to the map size.  The gameplay is entirely in 1st person POV from Henry with Delilah never actually making a physical appearance, only communicating through a walkie-talkie.  The prologue of the game is the only part not voice acted and simply told through text with some branching choices for the player to pick.  There is hints of an overarching narrative throughout the game, but it is mainly focused on the dialogue and relationship between Henry and Delilah. Both of them go into the story escaping from their grief, guilt, etc. for a summer, and come out rested enough to start healing themselves and their relationships.

Info: came out in 2016, walking simulator, on steam and apple store

Tags: Walking simulator, escapism, dealing with grief, healing, scenic environment, nature, single player, dialogue heavy, male protagonist

[entry posted by Ben Amsterdam]
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The Evolution of Trust by Nicky Case

In this game, you interact with a simulation of a basic trade interaction between people.  The trade is built around the basic interaction of either cooperating or cheating.  The game progressively adds different people that interact with the trade differently who serve as general archetypes from the real world.  It starts with one on one interactions and gradually moves to a more macro scale with both more people and more interactions between them.  In between transitions, there are explanations of outcomes as well as connections to real life examples of trust in action such as the trenches in WW1.  This is more of a simulation than a game for entertainment, but the topic of trust discussed is something often not found in video.  It is pretty much a universal topic, meaning it will almost always be relevant, even more so because it is not reliant on a current event to be applicable.

Info: Came out in 2017, simulation, free in browser

Tags: simulation, educational, hopeful, informative, trust

[Entry posted by Ben Amsterdam]

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Exposed by Sharon Daniel 

This game documents a compilation of testimonies from prisoners during the Covid-19 era. May of them did not get the medical help that they needed/deserved and were not given a safe environment from sickness. This "game" includes a dark black screen with firsthand quotes in an interactive timeline ranging from March of 2020 to December of 2021 written in all capital letters taking up the whole screen. It takes the player through many different underrepresented perspectives and gives voices to them. 

Info: Published in 2020; in eLiterature Collection (volume 4 2020); interactive timeline; database 

Tags: mass incarceration; Covid-19; 2020; quarantine; serious gameplay 

[Entry posted by Ariel Berk] 
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Please Answer Carefully by litrouke

Please Answer Carefully is a one-of-a-kind horror game designed in 24 hours to make players feel stalked. The game is structured as a survey and gradually becomes creepier towards the finish. We don't play as a specific character, but rather as ourselves. We play the game as if it were an ordinary survey, answering questions like "How often do you respond to emails?" In what appears to be a deliberate glitch in the game, the question shifts to "Then why won't you answer mine?" Several other incidents of this nature occur in the game, and we are eventually left with a surprise from the game's creator (which I will leave for you to discover!) It's a horror game in which we play the primary characters.

Info: Published in 2019, Interactive Fiction, Available on Twine 
Tags: Horror, Psychological Horror, Text-Based 

[Entry posted by Gabrielle Cuntapay] 
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The Temple of No by Alicia Contestabile et al

This game is unlike many other twine games in that it has no real meaning, purpose, or lesson. Its an adventure style game about going to the temple of no and finding a map that lets you see everything of the past a future. It is to be noted that the many details that writers would stumble over putting meaning behind are absent in this story. There are just silly little audios, songs, a things that have no real meaning behind them. For example the author wrote the lyrics to a song and had a background sound going so you could sing the song for yourself and encourages you to lighten up if you didn't. The game also included lots of sesnory stimuli like sound and drawings to improve the experience but none of which seem to carry any secondary meaning. All in all the game was more of an escape from the complex day to day experience rather than something educaional.

Info: Publichsed by Crows Crows Crows Games, on Twine

Tags: Adventure

[Entry posted by Ryan White]

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Nothing to Say by Celia, Rose
In this dating sim, your dialogue options are limited by what letters you've unlocked. In order to gain letters, you have to earn hearts by getting to know Zoe. it order to score a heart from a line we have to keep exploring the conversation to unlock more letters and let Zoe know how we feel. The point of this game it to simulate the struggles of speaking to someone and feeling tongue-tied. it starts out with the girl asking us question which we struggle at first to answer but then eventually come to an answer.Info:  made in 74 hours; fictional game; authoring tool: itch.io
tags: dating simulator, cute, funny
[entry posted by Darielle Saintilus]

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Who Stole My Bone? by Kryptic Kitty
This game intrigued me in the way that its art is so cute and minimalistic. Although unappealing to most, the game is meant to be reminiscient of children's shows such as Dora the Explorer. You are given a task to help find a bone that a talking dog named Spudz and come along his short journey through dialogue. You are given agency on which parts of the house to inspect and it all ultimately leads to an unexpected ending. 
Info:  Interactive Fiction, Adventure, Made with Twine, few minutes of gameplay
tags: art, bad-art, cute, dogs, funny, shrot, text based, twine
[entry posted by Justin Kim]


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A Kiss by Dan Waber 
The anthology of poems expanding upon another starts off with a kiss. You can choose a minute before or after the kiss, to the left or right of the kiss, or zoom in or out of the kiss. Each choice leads to a new observation and a new central focus. In some ways, the corresponding poems build off of certain random words of the previous poems. It is a really interesting collection and is the largest project ever completed on Twine. 
Info: Interactive story; Twine; published in 2013; narrative; hypertext 
Tags: life, poetry, love, memories 
[entry posted by Ariel Berk] 
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Reading Books can Benefit your Mental Health by Katie Martinez
This reading was interesting to me because it was kind of similar to some of the secondary readings we did in class about the topic of reading helping your mental health. This reading makes the claim that reading can provide a sense of comfort in lonelier times. Not only that but it also goes as far as saying that it can help your mental health. This relates very closely to what we have been doing in class.
 Info: Informative reading made in 2020, short reading
Tags: Mental health, reading, comfort, loneliness
[Entry posted by Charlie Fox]

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So Dark & Deep: A Story of Mental Illness by NAMI
This reading is an informative piece informing people that your life doesn't necessarily have to be bad for you to suffer from a mental illness it can just happen to anyone. Even if someone still has a smile on their face all the time you truly don't know what is going on on the inside. Always check on your friends and family no matter how happy they seem. You never know what someone is going through in their mind so always be nice and respectful to everyone.
Info: Informative reading by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, takes a few minutes to read
Tags: Mental Health, depression, anxiety, dark
[Entry posted by Charlie Fox]

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Horse Master: The Game of Horse Mastery by Tom McHenry 
This is an interactive adventure game that challenges you to be a horse master. A horse master is one of the most prestigious and coveted positions that one can hold in this simulated world. The player must grow, train, and nurture the horse from birth. The unique thing about this game is that it starts out very harmless but through the various endings and the way the author chooses to write the game, the game is terrifyingly scary. 
Info: Interactive, Fiction, Easy to read
Tags : Animals, Development, Twine
[Entry posted by Chelsea Kodiaga] 
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Random Boyfriend Generator by LinXueLian 
This generator's goal is to find you a boyfriend in the most easy way possible. As the player, you are required to do the bare minimum. The generator doesn't ask you about who you are, your likes and dislikes, and all the other topics you would discuss before matching with somebody in real life. The simulator generates many different matches with different endings. 
Info: Twine, Very easy read
Tags: Boyfriend, Cutesy
[Entry posted by Chelsea Kodiaga]

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A Tale of Crowns by Qeresi
In this game, we play as the crown prince of an empire, who is in hiding from the very people that murdered his parents. The work is about the prince's journey across "his" kingdom, as he tries to establish himself as the rightful ruler of the empire, while also keeping free of the enemies who are hunting him. The story is told through on-screen dialogue and choice-based narratives during interactions with other characters. There are also visual representations of new characters and places that the prince meets/visits.
Info: made in 2019; fictional game; authoring tool: Twine
Tags: Fantasy, Romance, LGBTQ+, Dating Sim, Choice-based
[entry posted by Christian Chavez]

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Video Games Could Hold Untapped Potential in Treatment of Mental Illness by Joni Sweet
This article tells the reader about a new study that was recently released showing that there is mounting evidence that video games can be used to actually treat conditions like anxiety and depression. As an affordable option for care, using video games along with other therapeutic treatments is more likely to result in effective solutions. 
Info: written in 2021; informative article authoring tool: verywellmind.com
Tags: Gaming, Mental Health, Depression, Treatments
[entry posted by Tanishq Bhatnagar]

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Celeste by indie studio Maddy Makes Games (playable on itch.io, Steam, Switch, and more)
Celeste is a beautiful game where you play as a girl named Madeline with depression and anxiety as you try and climb Celeste mountain. During her climb, you will encounter several characters, including a personification of your self-doubt known as Badeline, who will attempt to stop you from climbing the mountain. The game beautifully shows the struggle Madeline faces both inside and outside as she makes her climb. 
Info: made in 2015; playable everywhere: https://www.celestegame.com/
Tags: Games, Anxiety, Depression, Action
[entry posted by Tanishq Bhatnagar]
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Abide by Me by marafrass 
Abide by Me a story about a protagonist named Eric who goes back to a long-awaited visit to his parents after not visiting them for a long time. During the game, you will watch Eric fail to properly communicate with his parents and show the disconnect between him and his parents. This game showcases the importance of communication throughout our daily life. 
Info: Aug 28, 2019 playable on Itch.io 
Tags: Games with meaningful choices
Here's a link to the other AIQS100/Digital literature) list of works.