
Show HN: LockedAway – A unique text experience - foopod
http://lockedaway.online
======
chki
I like that you can change the number in the login form after the name and
type in the according month as the password and it will still work. E. g.
addy01 january is valid as well.

Edit: Ok, apparently you just have to enter a password that has the same
length as "december" and it will always work, the username is not important.

~~~
foopod
Tehe. December is always accepted. Otherwise people always get in on their
second attempt, user name isn't considered at all.

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greggman
Nice

My favorite interactive novel,

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Portal_1986](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Portal_1986)

You play an astronaut who comes back to earth after 100 years and everyone is
gone. You find one semi working computer. The game is that computer through
which you piece together what happened.

It's pre world wide web so my memory of it might be much better than reality
given it came out back in bbs/CompuServe days

~~~
throwanem
If you'd like to refresh your memory, the game is playable online under
client-side emulation at
[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Portal_1986](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Portal_1986)
.

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austinjp
Possible spoiler alert below.

Your Github repo reveals that one character has a specific mental illness.
However, multiple personalities are not a feature of that illness:
[http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-
dis...](http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-
multiple-personality-disorder?page=2)

~~~
foopod
I should probably clean up the readme then. Those were an initial set of ideas
when I started creating the story.

I went a bit off track.

------
foopod
I had the idea to make this game after playing Christine Love's Even Cowgirls
Bleed ([http://scoutshonour.com/cowgirl/](http://scoutshonour.com/cowgirl/)).

Features

\- Reverse Chronology to tell the story.

\- Told through the UI of an online journal.

~~~
throwanem
There's a lot of promise here! I really like it. Couple of thoughts I had that
might be worth sharing:

\- Maybe I'm just dense, but it took somebody else mentioning the twist before
I caught it. In retrospect, the picture should've been a pretty obvious clue.
But perhaps the story could do more to make clear what's going on. It's tricky
to write first-person and have it be clear that what the character sees isn't
the same as what the reader does, but the payoff is amply worth it.

\- I might hesitate to cast a character's unique perception of reality in
terms of a specific mental illness with defined traits. Two reasons: First, it
opens you up to nitpicks around differences between what you name and what you
portray, or conversely constrains the story to fit the disorder. Second, it's
a bit disrespectful of both character and reader. "Here," you seem to say,
"this person's inner life is interesting enough to share, something of which
it's worth your while to partake." And that's great! I love that. But when you
kind of turn around and go "I got you good, you were reading the DSM this
whole time!", it feels like I've wasted my interest and that's just no fun for
anybody.

\- Have you seen Twine? It's a platform for authoring static web-hosted
interactive fiction. Basically lets you not have to build your own tooling,
which it's great that you can and did, but that's time not spent on the story.
Not sure if Twine would suit your needs, but it might be worth a look.

\- Telling a story in reverse chronological is hardmode. You have to develop a
narrative that makes sense and rewards the reader in _both_ directions.
Totally doable and this is not a bad first cut at it, but I kind of feel like
another style might better reward this story. I mean, the essential tension
here is between the character's reality and the reader's assumptions, and
there might be other ways to let that tension build and resolve itself. Maybe
an epistolary hypertext style where the reader follows her own path through
the contents of a web diary, with some progress flags or similar to trigger
"new post"-style stuff at points where it will make sense to the individual
reader. That's not easy to pull off either, but I think maybe more so than
reverse chronological, and it also offers the reader a sense of discovery that
I think could be more present here.

Just some thoughts I had. I hope they're of some use to you. And for heaven's
sake don't stop writing! I'm really looking forward to finding out what you
come up with next.

~~~
foopod
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Your first point scares me the most though. If a reader doesn't get the twist
a great deal of value is lost and I doubt they are going to put in more effort
to get a better understanding.

I never thought about plot like this before, and now that I do, I feel like
the way I used mental illness was a somewhat cheap shot I used to create the
twist. Twine I discovered halfway through after going back and have another
look at 'Even Cowgirls Bleed', will probably use that for my next one.

But taking on reverse chronology was hard as balls. Turns out you can't just
write a story forwards and just read it to someone backwards.

Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to comment.

~~~
throwanem
You really did jump in the deep end, yeah! There are sharks there. But hey,
even if it didn't turn out quite the way you intended, you didn't drown or get
eaten, so on the whole I'd call that kind of a win.

As I said before, I hope you keep going! You seem to have good ideas, and
that's the thing that counts. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you'll
accomplish with practice.

Edit: Which reminds me, how can I best find out when you publish again? I've
followed you on Github, but maybe there's a better option you'd be so good as
to let me know about.

~~~
foopod
Took me a while. But my new site is up. Complete with a way to subscribe to my
stuff. More past projects to come too.

[http://jono.tech/](http://jono.tech/)

~~~
throwanem
Neat, thanks!

(As and when you find the time, an RSS feed would be great to have, too!)

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Brendinooo
Interesting concept!

My feedback is that I'd frame it more as a story than a game. Guessing the
password felt like it was going to be one of those Frvade-type games, but
after that it was simply taking in the story.

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ruanmuller
Probably unintentional, but the picture contains coordinates in the EXIF data
which you may want to remove.

~~~
foopod
Appreciate it. Now that it is in my github history though, it is probably more
effort than its worth. But I may as well remove it from the live site. If you
are ever in the neighbourhood come on over for a beer.

Thanks

~~~
elcct
Or you can just relocate

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scoj
Nice read and flow plus a great end.

Personally i think the typos add to the realism.

~~~
foopod
I will admit to the apostrophes that I skipped. That was purposeful. But now
you have piqued my interest, was there anything else?

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tomlx
Nice read. I liked it ... :)

