Anchor
IMPORTANT NOTE: ChatGPT was used to polish the tone and writing of passages, as well as build the UI and text animations.
Overview
You are — well, you. Everybody has something that is important to them — something that is so integral to their identity that, without it, they would cease being them. This game centers around the question of who you become when that thing — that piece of you — is extracted from your mind. When your skin is stripped from your body, what is left but raw wounds?
We invite players to empathize — to reflect on how they would feel if they were to lose what makes them them.
Through the lens of a young protagonist, Anchor is a branching psychological narrative about perception, identity, and loss. You are trapped between worlds: consensus reality, the one that everyone calls real, and the Other Country, the one that keeps calling you back. You’ve always felt the pull of the three inches — but between Dr. Keene and familial pressures, your appointments, boringly flat medications, and the looming threat of inpatient care, you have mounting fears that this pull will soon disappear.
Ideation, Inspiration & Process
The ideation preceding this game was a rollercoaster — and the beginning looked nothing like this. My original game idea was about a pigeon learning to pass the mirror test. However, the pigeon was killed before it was even born — and my story instead became a noir mystery in which you’re a witness of an abduction/murder and helping investigators locate the victim (plot twist, you might’ve had something to do with the crime). This idea was also, unfortunately, stillborn (though, I may want to revisit it in the future). I pivoted, for an itsy-bitsy smidge of time to making a game about a Russian-roulette clown, but — you guessed it — I did not. Instead, I decided, I wanted to make a game about identity. About the erasure of self that occurs when the world decides it knows you better than you know yourself. The cost of coherence. Of assimilation. Of normalcy.
The original ideation of this narrative branch was a story about a person who could taste colors, but slowly lost the ability to do so. But this felt much too whimsical. Too out there. While I wanted to preserve this theme — of mystery becoming pathologized and disinfected — I wanted to do so in a Fran Bow psychological horror type of way. (I don’t think I quite hit the mark to adequately call the work psychological horror, but shades of it tint the narrative in some way or another).
I’d recently read Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel, Martyr!, and the ending of this book reminded me of my love for poetic yet slightly absurdist descriptions (check out the ending of Martyr! for a better understanding of what I’m saying). I wanted to write a story that would make me (and hopefully the player) feel a bit empty. Beautifully empty. Like a matryoshka doll that knows it once contained multitudes. I wanted to feel how I did after reading Camus’ The Stranger. Or Seng’s If We Dream Too Long.
After developing the first iteration of Anchor, I was proud. This was a fully functioning game, replete with an engaging narrative, that I could call mine. Yet amidst this pride, another feeling nestled — that this game wasn’t quite done. And even now, after a couple further weeks of iteration, I admit that I still have plans for future iterations.
After a quick moment of reflection following P2, I realized that I had woefully underdeveloped the branching narratives associated with the namesake of this game — the anchors. Though titular, these small otherworldly anchors had very little screen time throughout the passages and had relatively no effect on any of the choices the player could make. As such, for P4, our team embarked on a mission to add more passages and branches that utilized these anchors.
In addition to the anchors, our team strongly believed we could improve the immersion of the Other Country. Beyond mere text, we knew we wanted something else. Something more. Audio felt as though it would cheapen the experience and didn’t feel adequate for the text-based IF format. We scratched that idea early. Full scale visuals were similarly X-ed out — we simply didn’t have the resources, time, nor talent to develop full artwork in this quick of a turnaround; and even if we did, we weren’t confident that it would supplement our medium as much as we hoped. However, we found a perfect middle ground in background visuals. By adding slight background visuals behind the text, we felt that this complemented the Twine text-based IF format as it allowed for the majority of the experience to still be derived from the passages, but it was supplemented by the soft and abstract art in the background. As such, for P4, our team also undertook the challenge of designing and adding unique backgrounds for Other Country passages throughout Anchor.
At this point, we invite you to play the game. To let us know how well we accomplished our goals. Hopefully, you will feel empathy for our unnamed protagonist as they fall apart (or maybe don’t) — after all, that was the goal of this project. Then, afterwards, you may keep reading this longwinded reflection to your heart’s content.
Target Audience and Trigger Warnings
Figure 1: Trigger warning panel that displays at the beginning of the game
The target audience for this game has not significantly changed from P2, where it was described as “enjoyers of long form fiction and psychological horror.” If anything, we’d like to double down on this target audience. Passages in Anchor can be long for individuals who are not accustomed to, or dislike, long form fiction. Some branches are composed of over 20 passages.
The subjective nature of Anchor’s narrative is also intended to allow for diverse interpretations, depending on the perspectives and lived experiences of the player. However, after reviewing feedback we received through P2 assessments and playtesting for both P2 and P4, we are further reinforcing the importance of players enjoying long-form fiction, given that our narrative’s abundance of text often meant that playtesters who fell outside of our target demographic risked skimming the narrative and receiving a less impactful experience with our story.
Playtesters generally reported that the content warnings felt sufficient for the material, with the exception of a missing “nausea/motion sickness warning”. Rather than just add this warning (which we did), we decided to flesh out a full accessibility settings window to allow users to reduce motion on the screen. Moreover, we added settings to enable high contrast, turn off background visuals, disable text fade in, and augment the text size. We wanted our game to be as accessible as possible to the largest number of users. We will delve into our accessibility implementation and ideation in the Iterations and Version History section.
Additionally, there is a new trigger warning dealing with suicidal ideation and substance misuse given the content of some of our new passages and endings. Please be warned, in case this is a sensitive topic for you.
Branching Map
Given the size of our branching map, it is linked here for your convenience. It will likely need to be downloaded to be viewed.
Google Drive Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cveco1mfyQ6nqYacHOtH_j8ZRM3WvhUA/view?usp=sharing
There are 96 nodes and 15 endings. 25 nodes were added in P4. P2 endings are marked in red. P4 endings are marked in green. Nodes that were added in P4 are marked in yellow.
Our two new endings are as follows:
‘The Walking Dead’ Ending: This ending is stylistically derived from TellTale’s The Walking Dead, which I replayed a lot of over Thanksgiving break (Seasons 1-3, and about to finish 4). As I was playing through, I was reminded how actions actually have very little impact on the final ending of these TellTale games. As such, for this ending, you have but the illusion of choice. Once Dr. Keene successfully crosses over, she is gone for good. You are the only one who can remember her. Not even your mother — or your new (but also old?) therapist Dr. Clem (Clementine from TWD haha) seems to remember her. This ending is reached by inviting Dr. Keene for a home visit and telling her to focus on the emotional sensation of the wall.
The ‘Substance Abuse’ Ending: Admittedly, this is the ending that I wish I had more time to perfect. The imagery of substance abuse and attempted suicide is a very sensitive topic that should be approached with care and nuance and I’m not quite sure I found the right way of writing the passages preceding this ending. However, an ending like this felt like it had a place in the story and felt right to include in this iteration. We plan to iterate on this ending in the future, after this class is over. You reach this ending by inviting Dr. Keene for a home visit and telling her to focus on the physical sensation of the wall.
Iterations and Version History
Summary of changes:
There were three main improvements made between P2 and the finalized P4!
- Anchor Routes — We focused on building out the narrative branches including the titular anchors. We added around 24 new passages.
- Accessibility Features — We gave users the option to remove effects, increase contrast, and adjust text size to allow our game to be playable by a wider audience.
- Background Art — We added background art to scenes taking place in the Other Country.
Beyond this, we also implemented P2 feedback to make slight tweaks to clarify when players are choosing to play again, and we also struck the poems from all endings except for the three anchor ones in the Other Country.
Here, we will break down the feedback from P2 that contributed to each of these choices.
Building out the Anchor
Anchor strongly benefits from the use of the IF format by walking an extremely fine line between interpretations, allowing the player to dictate the extent to which they believe in the Other Country. When drafting the story, the idea of an anchor—a connection between Here and There—was appealing. This would allow the player to navigate the impacts of their unique situation in a world that feels more familiar to the player themself, giving an in between to the therapy-heavy and Other Country heavy routes. However, when drafting P2, it felt more natural to build out an understanding of both worlds before writing to this bridge—thus, the anchor routes took a backseat, and the name of the game didn’t hold the significance it was intended to. This, then, became the main focus of P4: reintroducing these routes and increasing the overarching significance of the importance of receiving or not receiving the anchor in the ending you get.
By embedding anchors deeper into the narrative, we give the protagonist, and thus the players, a tangible vulnerability. Abstract delusions are easy for players to distance themselves from, but physical objects provide something for players to hold alongside the protagonist. Additionally, we believed that the anchor could act as an emotional thermometer throughout the narrative. It hums in agreeance and hope; warms in recognition; silences in despair. This allows players to internalize the protagonist’s mental disposition without us having to specifically spell it out for them. As such, though constrained by the IF medium, we hoped to use the written anchors as a form of mechanic to better employ empathy and convey emotion.
Beyond its mechanistic purpose, we also wanted the anchor to introduce a moral and emotional dilemma for players. What purpose do the anchors serve — a mere form of tangible and humming support in an otherwise unfriendly environment, or a tool to use to convince Dr. Keene that you aren’t insane? Do you ignore it? Believe it?
It’s your choice to make. Your fate to hold.
Accessibility features
Figure 2: Accessibility panel
As we learned from P2 feedback, text-based, long-form fiction is a particularly difficult genre to generate interesting and immersive user interfaces while keeping text legible and not disrupting the flow of the player. However, the components that disrupt this flow are different for everyone, particularly for individuals who have visual, cognitive, or neurological conditions which may lead to visual sensitivities. As such, developing an adaptive UI allowed for us to use creative visual devices while simultaneously ensuring quality of life for all of our players. To this end, we added accessibility features to the game including a high contrast mode, reducing motion on the screen, removing background art, removing fade-in effects, and adjusting text size. We thereby balance the atmospheric impact of our visual designs with readability — allowing users to try a multitude of different visuals until they find one that suits their reading style. In both our dark and light modes, our text effects (such as “shimmer”, “wrong”, and other text classes) also highlighted our desire to have atmospheric effects coupled with readability. Our accessibility menu only improves upon this.
Figure 3: Comparison of different accessibility modes
Our high-contrast mode uses plain black text on a white background, which has a contrast ratio of 21:1, exceeding Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) requirement of 4.5:1 for standard text. Effects like “wrong” (red) and “shimmer” (blue) keep a solid black core, with their color applied only as a surrounding glow. This preserves the visual emphasis without sacrificing readability or contrast.
Our Reduce Motion toggle turns off the floating sway effect of passages, as well as the gentle waning and waxing glow of certain text effects. This setting was in direct response to feedback from P2, in which a playtester noted that a “nausea/motion sickness content warning” would be helpful.
Similarly, the “Show Text Instantly” button makes passages appear instantly, rather than the standard slow fade in. This also makes the “prescription” writing appear instantly on the page, rather than writing itself out.
Our “remove background art” button is fairly self explanatory — toggling it off removes all the background visuals accompanying Other Country passages. Toggling it on brings them back.
Lastly, our text size option provides three sizes of text for players to use: normal, large, and extra-large. These options allow users to read at a size that is more comfortable for them while maintaining the same quality of play experience.
Background art
Figure 4: WIP background art
Figure 5: Inspiration for the background art—cyanotypes made previously by Brydie
In final feedback for P2, it was mentioned that adding “more of a visual separation between therapy and the Wall” would increase immersiveness—feedback that was reiterated during our P4 playtests. Similarly, as mentioned earlier, these backgrounds felt like a good addition to supplement our Twine medium. Thus, we decided to draw abstract visual art to include as the backgrounds for passages where the player is in the Other Country. We particularly chose abstract visual art as it matched the tone of the passages and the imagery being described. For example, we have wood-like textures to evoke feelings of the upside-down tree, water-like bubbles to call back to the upward-running creek, and other abstract natural textures that elicit the aesthetics of the Other Country. One of our designs also takes inspiration from Arcane’s hexcore — a biocore invention — that looks sinuous and alive. We strongly felt as though these designs would properly match the intended tone and imagery we wanted to convey.
Not-implemented Feedback and Rationale:
For P2, we received some feedback that stated, “I wish there was a bit more build up in the narrative to help players understand why certain choices are meaningful (e.g. think with body/mind, organize notepaper/not).” We decided to not implement this suggestion as the disorientation behind these choices is intentional. The protagonist doesn’t fully understand why or what choices matter, and neither should the player. By doing so, we allow the player to more fully immerse themselves in the experience of the protagonist. We believed that hand-holding the player through these moments would flatten the experience into something small, clinical, and predictable — the complete opposite of what this narrative hopes to explore.
We also opted to not incorporate the feedback requesting a “clearer description of the protagonist” as this ambiguity is another mechanic through which we build empathy within our narrative. The player is not meant to observe the protagonist from the outside; they are meant to be the protagonist. To inhabit the protagonist’s interior. To share their thoughts, feelings, and hardships. Offering a clearer concrete description of our protagonist would create unnecessary distance and anchor players in details that don’t contribute to the overarching narrative. By keeping descriptions vague, players are more able to project themselves into this role more fully.
Playtest 1—Justin (November 27)
Figure 6: Justin playing Anchor over Thanksgiving Break
Our first playtest was with Ryan’s brother, Justin—a reader of long-form fiction and an avid fan of interactive fiction narratives. Justin has played a multitude of IFs including TellTale’s The Walking Dead, Life is Strange, and Dispatch. Given that Justin is a fan of both long-form fiction and IFs, it felt like a good fit to have him playtest the game.
During Justin’s playthrough, he reached the Pasta Alfredo ending by organizing the messy papers. However, he played a route that we hadn’t seen anybody else play before — he resisted entering through the Wall, took his medications, then journaled. Watching this playthrough, I realized that the narrative path snowballed near the ask_side_effects node and didn’t allow for much player agency. As such, we added an intermediary node “explain”, that allows players to escape the snowball and have more agency in their actions and ending. This is the only node we added outside of the anchor branches.
Playtest 2—Davina (November 27)
Figure 7: Davina playing Anchor over Thanksgiving Break
Our second playtest was with Davina—also an avid fan of IFs and long-form fiction. She has similarly played Life is Strange and Dispatch. Given her inclination towards IFs, we decided it would also be good for Davina to play Anchor and give us her feedback.
Davina’s playthrough also reached the Pasta Alfredo ending, but unlike Justin’s relatively quick playthrough (as a result of taking his choice to resist the wall), Davina went through the wall and into the Other Country. Davina was a fan of the tone, writing, and aesthetics of the game and mentioned that she wanted to play it again. Unfortunately, we did not have time for a second playthrough. However, she mentioned that she wanted more differentiators between the Other Country and the real world (matching previous P2 feedback), which ultimately motivated us to make the background visuals for the Other Country passages.
Playtest 3—Madi (December 3)
Figure 8: Madi playing Anchor on the last day of class!
Our third playtest was with Madi—a fan of IF and long-form fiction. Madi had played the game multiple times prior, including as a final playtester for P2. She explored one of the new anchor routes and noted that it felt less predictable than other routes she had seen. The anchor, she noted, wasn’t guaranteed to lead you to a hopeful ending, but it did increase her hopefulness when she received it. This was helpful, since it confirmed that the anchor was acting as the emotional thermometer we hoped it would be.
At this point in development, a few endings weren’t fully complete, and it was helpful to see which options Madi gravitated toward and hear her reasoning—this gave us insight into whether the routes felt too predictable or appropriately nuanced. She was also confused whether “Their” should be capitalized on its first appearance, but she noted she would have noticed the pattern naturally if she were playing rather than giving feedback as a playtester.
Madi had a strong reaction when she realized that Dr. Keene was gone—wiped from reality—which served as positive feedback on the direction of the new route. Particularly, it confirmed that the emotional and empathetic reactions that were reported from P2 continued into the P4 additions. Finally, Madi suggested adding more visual cues when transitioning in and out of the Other Country to make it more immersive. At this point, backgrounds were only included for a handful of passages at the beginning and had not yet been distributed throughout the narrative.
In response to Madi’s feedback, we were emboldened in the direction of the new routes. We also implemented several fixes: changing “How thick is the gap tonight?” to “Restart?” at the end, correcting typos and formatting issues, adding backgrounds to all passages where the player begins in the Other Country, and increasing the opacity of the background art. This also matched Butch’s feedback from P2 that stated confusion with our restart button.
Playtest 4—Nikhiya (December 12)
Playtest video:
https://youtu.be/QNPS1rQv-qw
Nikhiya was our final play tester. She does not frequently play interactive fiction or long form fiction games, but she reads frequently and self-reported as enjoying the long-form format. Throughout her playthrough, she commented frequently on the visual effects—noting that one particular background art piece was immersive [2:30] and that the floating text drew her in, particularly when the playable character was caught up in their thoughts [7:56, 20:40].
Nikhiya reached a quick ending on her first playthrough and immediately asked if she could play again [4:58]—a sign that she was engaged with the narrative. She also seemed genuinely attached to the endings she received, noting after the first that she “made the right decision” [4:40] and after the second that it was “really cute” [18:58].
It was clear that the choices in the game felt meaningful, as she noted at one point “OMG I’m a little scared to keep going down this path” [16:36]. She also commented once that she thought it was funny that you weren’t given a choice at one point and were instead forced to go to therapy [5:50].
Ultimately, Nikhiya reported that she enjoyed the narrative and thought the writing was high quality [15:26, 21:00]. She empathized most strongly with the playable character and mother, commenting that there was “a lot to empathize with” regarding how the playable character was “searching for happiness in a way that is a big harm to themself” [19:38].
Nikhiya’s feedback was largely positive, so we made few changes following this test. The primary iteration stemming from this playtest was the addition of background images to all passages that take place in the Other Country.
