Egress: Act 1, Act 3: Sunday
I’m going to do this one differently.
I wrote the remaining journal pages of Act 1 while playing in the most dense detail yet, which was wonderfully fun to play and write, and is a deadening slog to transcribe into longhand. A lesson I keep learning in solo play is that, for as much as I imagine during play how things will read longhand, in the “more true” version that emerges from writing in greater detail accompanied by art and music for easy digital display to others — my enjoyment ultimately comes from the in-the-moment play itself. A narrative writeup of the kind I’ve been doing, especially of so much at once, can’t capture what makes this fun and exciting and capturing of my imagination. What it can do is convey how it was to play in Calypso, the decisions I was making, and how I chose to resolve things. I’ll focus on the highlights instead and be done.
What happens on Sunday, 4/16/201X is that Axel and morningWard manufact a way to enter the Medium without the ?Who (the [?AUTODIALER]) only to disagree about how to use it and what to do about her and split apart again, Axel encounters the embodied Glitch Goddess amid a water computer in another dream of the moon city in two hundred fifty six shades of yellow, Axel has a nightmarish shift at Pizza Palooza that undoes zir Pessimism trauma because there has to be more worth living for than this, Axel and Lucia explore the UFO Museum where she works as an ASL interpreter and then meet Beau and Iris to explore a secret underground laboratory, the four of them learn about mysterious prehuman ruins left by the players of a game that created their world, Iris Links the prehuman [ANCIENT of OCEANSONG] from the world-making game whose song still haunts the “octopus ruins” off the coast of Avalon (where Iris seems to have killed her friend Victor who now haunts her as a rude and wicked ghost,) and they ride the Wind Fish to New Neo City to confront the President/Ruler of the Hosts of Air and help Pony and Ruby.
==
Axel and mW worked on the [?AUTODIALER] at her Bastion, the [WOOLLY WORKSHOP], made from two Nodes: a sheep farm and the gunpla shop in Stratheden her Cousin loves. They had a thrilling mechasheep chase when they parted ways.
The Glitch Goddess in her element, amid the water computer she manipulates with her parasols. This was the first concept art piece Hamhambone created for Egress, and I was dying to play something in this moment before the game-as-played developed in a totally different direction. The water computer is inspired by this tweet specifically:
She tells Axel that is like a mitochondria, an outside element that was inserted into the system and has made herself essential to its functions across many iterations. In the world that came before Earth, she planted a seed of her being in what she calls the rules of the world, its meta-physics if you will, so that her self would blossom again when communications technology sufficiently advanced to host her. (She bloomed a little early, she says, gesturing languidly toward her rotary phone.) She implies that the Egress software emerged when conditions developed sufficiently in the same way - “it was bound to happen in the world you made.” This time, she will not be at the mercy of the world-killing game, but put it at hers.
At the climax of zir dream, Axel asks: “but why? what is all this for? what do you want?”
On the next page, Dial-a-Reason for yourself on the ?Who’s rotary phone.
#%&@ are bonus keys unlocked after dialing 0946.
The Pizza Palooza scene was the climax for Axel (climaxel) and so satisfying to realize was happening and play out. Ze had to put on the duck suit and perform a full-length animatronic pizza birthday song for crying children, accompanied by zir Boss in clown makeup on keytar, while suffering rank-3 Grendeldew Withdrawal and paying dearly for every Strive roll. (Ze puked in the mascot head.) This is zir MGS4 microwave hallway scene. It was also inspired by this scene, my fic of which is as far as I know the only entry in the Toni Erdmann tag on AO3.
This song was composed early on in anticipation of a scene happening at the UFO Museum on the West Clowncrest town map, but after switching to morningWard fuzzed the turn order, it just never came up until now. Axel did some life-size Asteroids/Space Invaders AR puzzles while Lucia gave zir the tour for the dozenth time, she talks about Clowncrest history and the lost UFO crash site near the Fire Tower, it evokes the prehuman ruins stuff but doesn’t end up mattering that much. I wanted to give it more attention than an Oracle roll but the attention I played with just ended up feeling like a checkbox on the way to scenes I actually wanted to play.
Hamhambone wrote an entire text adventure scene for this “walkaround” that we played together. It’s wonderful and charming with puzzles and dialogue and multiple POV characters and I will upload it as a Twine here in the future. Axel sells Beau zir copy of the 200X video game for girls Count My Sheep: Shining Iris Birthday Adventure (which ze had purely as a collector’s item ofc.)
Radical sci-fi music for the Fire Tower secret lab walkaround. That darn oscilloscope makes for some tricky puzzles.
Some theme music for Iris and her sad and gloomy secrets (or are they mysteries?) Iris was involved in something terrible and tragic that killed Victor, and won’t talk about it with anyone except sort of Beau (and Victor’s ghost, but they’re cold comfort.) Making a new friendship with Beau, who genuinely likes Iris and doesn’t know all her laundry, is good for her.
Iris Hanley, erstwhileImperatrix (hard-fought she/her)
Traits: Expressive-2, Gloomy-2, Handy-1, Teenager-1
Traumas: Stained 2, Empty 2, People Pleaser 1
Edges: Ghost Trick (take a condition like Haunted for +LD when Victor does ghostly things)
Snowgrave (take +LD when you break boundaries to do the forbidden and the unthinkable.)
Beau Curtis, orphanOuroboros (easygoing he/him)
Traits: Caring-1, Competitive-2, Musical-2, Teenager-1
Traumas: Aimless 1
Edges: Friendship is Magic (take +LD when your friends are there to support you)
Fatal Clash (add or raise a condition to reroll a Strive result and avoid the stated danger)
Riding the Wind Fish from Clowncrest to New Neo City. Bless Hamhambone for bringing this vision to life. My imagination tends toward All Pain All The Time, and she’s so good at bringing wonderful fun silly adventure colors back in. We make a good team!!
After yoyoYolo’s track art for Sunbumper | yuuDii . (somebody say oh yeah)
==
Meanwhile, Pony and Ruby create fancy gala outfits and meet up with Sully to infiltrate the President’s fancy gala at a very tall building’s lounge, Pony is designated by the ?Who as her “Key player” who will open the “Mercy Gate” back-door entry to the Medium at the moment of meteor impact (which Pony rejects), Ruby has a fashion duel with Sonya that changes her heart but puts them both at the President’s mercy, they have a walkaround at the gala and then crash the President’s party when he reveals his plan to monetize the ludoapocalypse and steal players’ Egress cards to sell entry into the Medium to investors.
==
Ruby’s handcrafted fancy gala outfit, worthy of a timelostPlayboy. She manufacted her Magenta card with her Chenoweth project tiara from Friday AM; the moon’s transit across her headband reflects the fortunes of the Magenta domain in real time. (another genius hamhambone idea.) Arts high school drama was mainly included in the game to justify characters wearing outfits like this. Her look is inspired OOC and IC by several outfits worn by Big Freedia.
When I talk about Egress as a project made up of paratexts around an imaginary text, this is a good example. Working on this design live with Hamhambone, directly going into the layers of Pony’s sprite and changing her hair, eyes, and clothes in paint.NET, getting to see her present fem, was a session of playing Egress. My favorite detail is that her eyes still have the exhaustion lines from her other sprites, but there’s light in her eyes now. (or is it the other way around?) Her honorary Key player dress, CMY colors tied together by black highlights with a splash of her own orange color, is modeled on one from 80’s Idol Studies by Hana Chatani.
The ?Who contacts Pony at 9:46 AM New Neo City, waiting in Ruby’s courtyard, after having ditched a very confused/curious/concerned Fox and Wolf Dad to warpskate here in time.
Gristskip secrets revealed…!
Pony rolled another Strive to resist the ?Who’s plans for her. Failure (or partial success probably) would mean Pony is bought in to this Mercy Gate plan and goes into the rest of the day planning to give the ?Who the Key to the Medium, like an evil servant with a cursed tiara should. To my great surprise, she succeeded with a 10 on the resist roll: suspicious and unimpressed in the light of day with the confidence boost from her outfit, Pony rejects her scheme and breaks the Got Your Number condition. Go Pony!!
Ruby and Pony buffing each other up in the isometric courtyard of Ruby’s building before they head to the train station by the Snack Corner. I love this piece! Ruby and Pony growing closer and more trusting wasn’t the only way things could have developed through play, but it did. Her pose here evokes her pony_happy talksprite:
At Presidential Tower (accessed via Pony’s Portal Opener from a keycarded business pedway entrance,) Ruby gets the initiative on Sonya and challenges her to a fashion duel at last.
Birdsonya (Broken Cage Mix) | Hamhambone
Sonya gets a hopeful, forward-facing remix of her theme song with more buildup and fanfare when fashion dueling with Ruby and seeing her ex-friend’s determination reminds her of who she is and wants to be.
Sonya and Ruby resolve their fashion duel by Ruby offering Sonya the Egress interface to freely design her own outfit instead of her Student Council lieutenant uniform. I really enjoy her breezy pharaonic femme look together with Ruby’s more masc pants and coat. She still means business. Her look is inspired by several outfits worn by this model.
The Ruler of the Hosts of Air/President of Chenoweth Student Council appears in person. One of the fiction costs Ruby incurred in her (exceedingly hard-won) fashion duel was losing the element of surprise, and so this guy shows up with his bodyguards Benni and Paula to join them in the elevator on the way up.
I played this scene of Pony at the gala imagining it as a walkaround, shown here, with lots of little interactions and secrets in any order. I like the identical business guys. That’s Sully with the green tie, and Wolf Knight playing butler at the bottom (a walkaround player would see Harlequin Vixen shamelessly flirting with him while he’s on the clock for his evil boss.) She’s gazing at a Chenoweth Student Council art display: the doll Sonya mentioned to Ms. Wheeler, which the President/Ruler has secretly offered to Iris as a robot body to house Victor, playing on her guilt to keep her (and through her Beau) working for him. (Like its successor GB-873-0F-15, Victorbot has a black EX Turbine in its chest.)
==
They have a showdown at the gala, the President completely eats shit
onstage with a heavenly kick from Pony (🎵 last
surprise), morningWard (who seems lost and desperate
on Plan ABCD F) and the player killer (a powergamer in
anonymizing power armor) warp in to assist the President (PK is his left
hand and MW needs to do a compursuit for someone), then Beau
and Iris and Axel and Lucia warp in, the Egress AR layer puts them in a
big RPG fight with dialogue between turns, the President reveals that he
is re-experiencing a “New Game+” timeline of these last few days after
stealing Sonya’s original Magenta card and being entitled
Prince of Breath (for destroying her potential), the player
killer demonstrates that he is a misogynistic and transphobic little
online fascist who wields a real katana as a deadly weapon (and claims
to be entitled Thief of Life), the player killer griefs Pony
and sends her to a glitch hell minus world, Beau rejects the
gamification battle layer and beats the living shit out of the player
killer with a baseball bat, Ruby and the others gang up on the President
and defeat him utterly by looting his Egress card, and Pony stabilizes
her panic spiral when she meets other glitch-ghosts and finds that they
can all see and talk to Victor, a non-glitch(?) ghost.
==
The dramatic Bastion boss battle music the Prince of Breath dreamed of, with high winds blowing on the metaspace sky deck. He doesn’t get any art or a personal name, but I picture him between Takuto Maruki and Gideon Graves. The idea for the player killer grew out of a section from Mondo Nano by Colin Milburn about Crysis players on a message board imagining their gaming rigs and the game’s power armor suit in weirdly horny ways. Being named the Prince of Breath and Thief of Life is supposed to create a sinking feeling of future possibility narrowing to a dull needlepoint: oh god they have classpects.
Games are played by people with power and social positions outside of the game rules themselves, and I wanted to set the stakes that truly awful people like these two can play Egress, with a high degree of skill (and pay-to-win resources), and enter the Medium if they aren’t absolutely defeated. Being skilled at gameplay has no moral valence.
An especially unsettling and experimental arrangement of Pony’s Act- motif for being banished to glitch hell. Pony suffered both Calypso “death” mechanics: Taken Out at six Conditions (by a [BREATHTAKER] into [BLITZGRIEF] combo), then Losing It in a colorless silent minus world with all three Traumas at 3. Wandering around as the structures of the world despawned, all “you cried out to the darkness”/ “but nobody came” was fun angst to soak in.
==
Then, with one hour left to the end of the world, Axel/Beau/Iris/Lucia/Mdub/Ruby/Sonya/Sully gather on the roof of the very tall building (shielded by Iris’ lantern as New Neo City panics and CMY game constructs raid the roof in waves) to figure out how the hell they’re going to stop the meteor, Ruby has a heart to heart with Sonya about all this and they both affirm that they want to enter the Medium and make a better world from which they can mend this one, Beau sends the Wind Fish to pick up his best friend Azræl so his bro can see him knock this shit out of the park, Iris communicates with Pony and the other glitch-ghosts via Victor and they develop a plan enabling Pony to enter as the Key player in the Victordoll body, Axel transcends the ?Who’s glitching of zir Grid by jailbreaking zir own Egress interface with no strings attached, morningWard sneakily misuses the [?AUTODIALER] to extract a kernel of the ?Who’s uncorrupted “pure essence” which takes the form of an ancient parasol, and Axel glitches the President’s Magenta card into a blank but valid Key/Black card with no back-doors or subroutines from anybody.
Victor agrees to cooperate and let Pony use the doll body made for them if Iris fuses their [SHADE of SECRETS] Link with the [ANCIENT of OCEANSONG] to create a new goth mer-squid Sprite called [ANCESTOR SIREN]; Ruby fuses her Links with Sonya and Ms. Wheeler into a resplendent flying birdsprite of wisdom and creation called [WEAVER BENNU], Axel and Ruby and Iris each create Links with Pony and Axel cross-card fuses the Links into [POLITE HEIR] AKA Ponysprite, Ruby and her Sprite manufact Victorbot and the Key card into Ponybot/Robony equipped with the [BlackRibbon], and through a complex chain of possession (ha) orchestrated by Iris glitch-ghost Pony is tenuously embodied via Ancestor Siren and Polite Heir into Robony, who immediately tells Harlequin Vixen to deliver a stack of messages from the other glitch-ghosts to their loved ones and to protect Pony’s family and the others’ as best as she can if the worst happens.
The Polite Heir, just called Ponysprite. Like a 3D vs 2D image, being cross-card fused from three different players’ Links to the same person means Ponysprite has deeper subjectivity than say Harlequin Vixen, but is still bound by how Egress makes legible Axel, Ruby, and Iris’ underlying conceptions of Pony. I like when instances of someone’s ego are instrumentalized. It’s weird and sad in interesting ways to me that I’ll probably explore more deeply later. (ponysprite wearing those clothes instead of the dress pony’s currently wearing is an intentional trouble flag.)
Thats Antlermagic Baby … “Accept No Substitutes”
(glitchghost pony → ancestor siren → polite heir/ponysprite → ponybot/robony)
(the black ribbon is the same deal as ruby’s magenta tiara: a version card as an accessory)
(ancestor siren and ponybot have the same spit-curl hair because they’re both Victor-derived)
(those are iris’ headphone antlers. beau refers to iris’ mysterious antlermagic in the lab walkaround, remember?)
They’re out of time and the meteor is about to impact the very tall building where these final nominees are gathered, morningWard desperately slows it down via Semaphoria-controlled CMYK kaiju (a la Majora’s Mask), Beau takes a frame-perfect swing with the best bat grist can manufact to knock it back (a la FLCL), the titanic meteor holds on his bat at profound cost for every second bought, the ?Who manifests on every digital display in New Neo City (if not Earth) to offer the nominees her Mercy Gate (entering the Medium under her sovereignty and preserving Earth like a bottled ship) and (increasingly desperately as the timer ticks down) encourages everyone to pray for their nominees and accept her mercy!, Mdub is about to panic and beg for the Gate when Pony offers her grace: leave all your traps and schemes and trojans here and then take my hand and i’ll carry you in myself, Mdub accepts and purges her Grid of all those things (except the parasol secretly containing the ?Who’s pure essence which she hand-carries), Iris trains her lantern beam on a pinhole path Axel creates with the ?Autodialer through the metaphysical-metaphorical Mercy Gate, Beau manages to knock the meteor back out into the horizon, and Ruby flies the nominees and everyone they can carry through the Gate and into whatever comes next.
==
pray in the manner of an earthbound final boss battle. She broadcasts live footage of the nominees on the rooftop to every screen her tendrils can access, flashing their names and contact information so everyone knows. as time runs to the last second and her plans are not coming to fruition the cool collected alien hypermind panics.
Hold Back The Moon | Hamhambone
A good crunchy Beau’s-guitar theme the very last flash of Act 1. The second minute is the meteor colliding with Beau’s bat while the Glitch Goddess demands, exhorts, and outright begs for Earth’s Egress nominees to TAKE THE DEAL!!!
Beau at the top of Presidential Tower, swinging with all his FLCL/TTGL might and making frame-perfect contact with the meteor at the moment of impact. CMY shockwaves ripple out from the hit. I love the slight curl of his hair.
It’s hard to convey the in-the-moment mechanical stakes of this last sequence. Beau was rolling with disadvantage x4 at first (roll 5 dice, keep the lowest two) from all the adverse Conditions of doubt/injury/Egress/?Who/meteor in play, rerolling with Fatal Clash at the cost of a new Condition in his limited slots each time. Every time he lowered Looming Meteor-3 by 1 rank with a 10+ bonus, another PC got one Strive roll to help him or prepare to enter the Medium. Not only that, I was on the last few lines of the very last overflow page of my actual physical journal, so this had to be the end.
I genuinely did not know what would happen or who would enter the Medium and on what terms until I played this scene to find out — I was sure that someone would be left behind (at least as the new status quo), or die, or they would have to take the ?Who’s Mercy after all. Beau knocking back the meteor and buying the breathing room to be physically carried through the Gate emerged from rolls and came as a total surprise to me.
==
> Oracle: Do the nominees successfully enter the Medium through the Mercy Gate?
> Spend Ruby’s LD “Flight” from creating Weaver Bennu to answer Oracle without rolling. Yes, they do, lifting off and flying through the metaphysical corona around the meteor.
With the last scene complete, I reach the end of the 3-Act Frame. The last step is to tally up the Victory Points I’ve notched during play through rolling 12+ on Strive rolls, compare them to the remaining Formidable Conditions on the Enemy, and use those to answer some Epilogue questions that determine how it all turns out after the last scene.
I have a total of 13 VP accumulated, which is good, because there’s a large cast of characters to account for. There are two Enemies in play: the Ruler of the Hosts of Air has been washed, but the ?Who still has Conditions on her, along with Egress itself. Their remaining Conditions suggest the state of play and serve as a limiter on the Epilogue questions I can answer.
The nominees overcame the Gamification, Normalization, Entry Condition, and Looming Meteor conditions on Egress itself, allowing them to enter the Medium on their own terms and prevent an extinction impact from the glitch meteor. But it still has Heart’s Desire, and power of AR remains a temptation to leave Earth behind and live within the game world.
Meanwhile, though her Authoritative condition was overcome, revealing her lying and scheming and breaking her untouchable composure (and enabling the Nominees to hijack her Mercy Gate and backdoor-enter the Medium without her,) the ?Who retains Silent and Tempter. I take that as meaning she remains on Earth’s networks, maintaining her mysteries and her private digital metaplace to retreat to, and continues to manipulate people on shaken-to-the-bones Earth with knowledge and power.
That’s 3 Enemy conditions remaining, which means I have to burn 1 VP each and nullify the three highest possibilities for the ending.
> The enemy has no path forward; win or lose, their plan ends here.
This doesn’t happen. -1 VP, to 12.
> What grave consequence of this comes to pass?
Egress generates its alternate reality and the nominees enter it, playing the game and moving on to whatever the next phase of Egress’ ludic life cycle is. A fragment of the ?Who’s consciousness is brought into the Medium. Earth is left reeling as its civilizational data is harvested, CMY monsters spread unrestrained, and meteorite storms strike from the knocked-back glitch meteor. (Much more on this later!)
> The enemy is killed or utterly neutralized.
This doesn’t happen either. -1 VP, to 11.
> Who else dies?
Many, many people die as a result of the so-called Glitch Stranding bringing Earth to its knees.
> The enemy is defeated or their plans are thwarted, for now.
Neither does this. -1 VP, to 10.
> What does it cost you?
The nominees are permanently separated from the lives they knew before, bringing only what they take with them physically, mentally, and digitally. Egress achieves its goal of bringing the nominees into the AR world of the Medium with the data they collected in their Grids. On Earth, the ?Who is locked out of the Medium but retains the power, patience, and sheer spite to influence events.
That leaves me with 10 VP to answer the remaining three questions, once per VP.
> Someone wins their goal or achieves a dream. Does it make them happy?
3 VP: Iris, Ruby, and Axel enter the Medium as the designated Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow players for the game session. As the hijacked Gate takes them into a metaphysical space of pure creation…
-
Iris lets herself feel a private and profound relief that she doesn’t have to justify to her family, her assigned counselor, the cops, Victor, anyone. Earth has been swallowed up. The past is gone. She escaped. She’s free.
-
Ruby floats, her flight cloak billowing, and feels relief at making it through the Gate,, fury at the scheming and destiny-screwing that brought them here, grief at the loss she can’t even process yet, hope for what can be renewed.
-
Axel rides a feeling of true euphoria through the sea of potential. It worked. Zir whole body electrifies. Every one of zir haters has been cosmically owned. So long, doomed speck of dust! The future is ours to create!
> Someone who was imperiled survives. What does it cost?
1 VP: Pony…it’s complicated. Something very strange happened. Her consciousness, present by a chain of possession in Ponysprite-within-Ponybot to initiate the game session as Key player, got all fuzzy and staticky. Ancestor Siren, Polite Heir, and Robony enter the Medium, and one of them is counted as the Key player, but Pony isn’t with them. She’s still in glitch hell with the other ghosts, eyes white, watching the WAITING TO ENTER… loading text in the sky of the void. (Much more on this later, too!)
> Someone is enriched or suffers little lasting damage. What is lost to them?
2 VP: morningWard and Beau are physically carried through the Gate by Iris-Ruby-Axel-Pony, which totally counts as bringing only what you can take with you. Neither of them are sure what’s going on - Beau thought he was going to die trying to save the Earth until he won somehow, and mW is lost and full of doubts as her grand plans have all evaporated. Egress doesn’t know what to do with them, but they do have valid Magenta and Yellow cards. With the power of the Key player, Pony manually allows mW and Beau to enter the game session as it initiates, and Egress will just have to find a way to make it work.
1 VP: Also physically carried on flying shoulders and piggybacks through the gate are Sonya, Sully, Azræl, Lucia, and Laika. None of them even have game cards to interpret, but as Key player, Pony once again overrides the rules and insists that they all be brought in. They aren’t players, technically, but they are in the Medium. Egress will figure something out.
> Someone who was imperiled survives. What does it cost?
1 VP: The Glitch Goddess is barred from the Medium as her own Mercy Gate closes, trapping her on Earth while the puppets she played with escape without her. She remains on the datawebs as a digital devil demiurge, unable to transcend her form but still capable of taking revenge. (More on this later.) But something else happens: morningWard brought a purified kernel of her core self, the person she was in a bygone world before she became the ?Who, into the Medium in the form of an ancient parasol. What will this transplanted seed grow into?
1 VP: Harlequin Vixen, caught up in the static storm that separated her player from the Medium, is stranded on Earth. Bitter and frustrated at this anti-freedom antithetical to her nature, she nonetheless follows Pony’s instructions to use her powers as an immortal game construct to protect the families and loved ones of the nominees
1 VP: The mega-rich tech investors, art and culture magnates, and Chenoweth Student Council and their hangers-on who were at the President’s gala: with a clear explanation of what was happening with Egress and the imminent doom of Earth, they evacuated the building with whoever they could grab and fled to one of their secret apocalypse shelters near or under New Neo City. If the glitch meteor had impacted, they might have been doomed anyway, but the nominees managed to save them and the rest of the world. Their tech access, inside information, and conspiratorial ambition will lead them in (a stranger direction.)
==
As for everyone else - Victor, Quentin, Ms. Ban, etc - Calypso says:
> Any questions left unanswered are, at best, unknown. Look to the fiction and the Oracle to answer those you care to.
Their fates are undefined. Their presence in the story may end here, or they may come back into play later. It depends on how the game plays out.
==
So that’s Act 1 of Egress, played in Calypso. It went much differently than I expected when I started playing Act 1, Act 1, Scene 1 on April 13th with Pony stuck in his room by a captured doorknob. (He does have a way of getting stuck tho.) I knew at the start that my goal was to meet multiple C/M/Y players and get at least a few of these characters into the digital otherworld, but my sense of the possible changed during every scene. Characters like Mdub, Beau, Iris, and the President and player killer emerged during play from Oracles and motifs, informed by my developing imagination of this world, the directions suggested by the art and music created by Hamhambone, and on a substrate level just the kinds of characters I was interested in playing. The more I played, the less impact the Frameworks of Calypso had on events: they informed certain scene framings and gave me a roadmap to mark the game as complete, so I could answer the Epilogue questions and find out where things lay for the next thing if desired. Somewhere along the way, early on, I became more invested in these characters than I expected to be. My overall goal is to play and write and create art within a teens-with-too-many-computers pastiche setting as a formal exercise, but the excitement of my collaborators and readers has made me genuinely interested in these specific characters and their world beyond just being pawns on the board. I want to see what comes next.
Thanks for reading! Catch you in the Medium ✌️