The most exciting thing I read recently isn’t a book
(or a blog post or an article or anything usually considered ‘the written word’)
Scenario 01
It is early morning. You are brushing your teeth. With your non-dominant hand. Because in your dominant hand (right in my case), you are holding your phone and eagerly reading a story that has kept you hooked for the past day and night.
Scenario 02
You are at the office in the middle of back-to-back meetings. Ideally, you should take a break, rest your eyes, and maybe follow other sensible advice. But you don’t. You are invested in the story now.
Scenario 03
The last thing you do before going to sleep is to check where the protagonist has reached. It has been a long day. You should sleep. But you simply can’t. More so, instead of ‘only’ reading, you are making decisions impacting the story arc. They are literally a matter of life and death.
Yes, the most exciting thing I’ve read recently isn’t a book. It is an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) game called Lifeline.
Available on iOS, Lifeline is the tale of an astronaut, Taylor, whose spaceship has crashed on a remote, uninhabited moon. No one else on the ship has survived, and his/her only contact across the void of the universe is you. Taylor is not an experienced astronaut and depends on you to make decisions. Try the stubbornly stuck door to the galley, or stick with rat food? Camp by a heat source engine emitting possibly lethal radiation, or risk the moon’s sub-zero night? Go after strange glowing scuttling things in the dark, or stay put and hope they were a figment of the imagination? You press buttons in your ‘text only’ interactions, and Taylor responds accordingly.
Those who know me will never categorize me as a ‘gamer.’ I’m and have always been a ‘reader’, and this game got me hooked because of its above-average writing. Not exactly at ‘The Martian’ levels but thrilling enough to hold your attention for long periods. Add to it the interactivity. It takes the whole experience beyond reading. Even if you were taking things lightly at the start, the first time your decisions lead to Taylor’s death, and they will, it hits you with the full force of remorse. Gradually, you start caring for Taylor and make decisions more carefully. One thing that makes the game enjoyable is that not everything is immediate. When Taylor goes to sleep or traverses long distances, you do have to wait for hours for the next update. And the messages arrive just like they would IRL. It doesn’t matter if you are in the middle of a meeting or winding down to sleep…a friend depends on you to respond, and more often than not, you do.
The game has a pared-down aesthetic. There is a background score, but it sounded monotonous and oddly jarring, so I turned it off. After the first time Taylor’s path reaches its end, you can also opt for a ‘fast’ mode which I assume will generate immediate responses irrespective of Taylor going to sleep or a hike. I didn’t. Lifeline is also available on the Apple Watch and looks well made for its text-based notification environment. I played most of it on my iPhone and was happy with it.
After a few unfortunate endings for Taylor, in the end, I did manage to reach a resolution which should be satisfying for both of us. That said, I’m not sure if I’m going back again to replay it, but it sure was fun while it lasted.