There's some argument that the limitations of this format (compared to open-ended parser games, or the very open-ended AI Dungeon posted here last week) are a benefit. Ian Bogost's piece in the Atlantic a couple of years ago, "Video Games are Better Without Stories" [1] argued that narrative in games can't deliver on its promise--you can't craft a story while also letting the player explore. To my taste, games like Inkle's 80 Days and Heaven's Vault, and Nicky Case's games like the Coming Out Simulator [2], make effective use of the constraints of the medium. They do feel more like literature than games, which might feel overly conservative to folks primarily interested in the phenomenological possibilities of games.

My project, Unfold Studio [3], makes use of the affordances of Inkle's Ink language for teaching CS in the context of students' existing identities and concerns. Here, the limitations of the format are again useful. Students can create small playable worlds in a way that's still manageable and which makes CS concepts rhetorically powerful--they are immediately useful for creating particular experiences for the user. Here's an accessible piece [4] on how this approach could support marginalized youth in developing criticality: understanding and challenging unfair techno-social conditions.

I'm always looking for collaborators!

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/video... [2] https://ncase.me/cos/ [3] https://unfold.studio [4] https://chrisproctor.net/publications/proctor_2019_voice.htm...