Melody of the Deep

I write short stories for myself occasionally. They’re usually just sketches — different scenes that I think are cool, character studies, moments from bigger stories that don’t actually exist.

A few of these stories feature a woman called Zara who one day refused to die. And because of this, she was cursed and expelled from time.

I have written a few scenes about different variants of Zara and Melody of the Deep is an attempt to combine a couple of these as a piece of interactive fiction.

My main objective with this project was to learn how to use Twine using Harlowe. Even though the story is very linear, I wanted to experiment with branching paths, hyperlinks, and some basic Harlowe programming to control the flow.

Technically speaking, Melody is rather simple. The most “experimental” part of it would be my (perhaps) excessive use of the style macros. The story is supposed to be unnerving, so I tried to convey that by making certain words crooked.

I realized I needed to experiment with the style macros after testing the first iteration of the story. Frankly, just a wall of text was really boring. Then I realized that this isn’t a book. It’s not just words that the player reads, but also how it is presented to them. What if I can make the word “buzz” vibrate? What if the unnerving stuff that happens to the protagonist is written in off-kilter text?

Overall, I’m pretty proud of Melody. I will keep updating it with feedback from readers to hone it and make it really good.