This project was unlike anything I have ever made before. Going in, I did not expect a text-based game to feel so emotional or personal. I always thought interactive fiction was just storytelling with choices, not something that could make players pause and reflect. Unsent Drafts changed that completely. It showed me how writing, pacing, and code could combine to make people actually feel something.
At first, I had no idea what kind of story I wanted to tell. My early versions, including one about a French chef chasing ambition and another about a mystery set in an abandoned school, were cinematic but not human. They were interesting, but they did not make people care. When I experimented with Inform7, I realized how much the form factor shaped emotion. The parser commands made interaction mechanical and broke the sense of intimacy I wanted. That experience showed me that empathy depends on how a player interacts with the story, not just what the story says.
Designing the final version was surprisingly technical for how emotional it became. Coding my own interactive fiction system allowed me to control every silence and transition, turning timing itself into a design element. The “Read Immediately” pop-up was not just a feature; it was about vulnerability. I wanted players to feel that awkward, familiar tension of sending something too soon or waiting for a reply that never comes. Every button (send, edit, delete) became a moral choice, not just a command.
Watching others play was fascinating. Everyone experienced the game differently, and that contrast revealed how empathy looks different across people but always returns to pride, guilt, and the fear of being misunderstood. Seeing players physically pause before clicking was the moment I knew the game worked. It was not about winning or losing; it was about reflection, and in the final version, my brother and friend felt different and reflected.
Looking back, this process pushed me far outside my comfort zone. I started thinking of games as interactive stories but ended up seeing them as empathy systems. If I had more time, I would make Unsent Drafts more adaptive, possibly analyzing player-written text to shape responses or tone. Even in its current form, I learned something fundamental: empathy is not something you tell through words. It is something you design people into performing.
