reading

Keeping up appeances by mendi lewis obadike was the first and most enjoyable reading for me. I wasn't too interested upon the landing of the page because the layout was pretty simple. The text seemed to be broken up in a weird way as well, which I shortly discovered was intentional to hide certain parts of the text. If you just look at the uncovered text, the story isn't too special it is just a typical day for someone at work. However, through the reveal of the hidden text readers are able to find out so much more about what had actually happened. It reminded me of secret ink pens where you can only read text underneath a special type of light that allows you to see the ink.

The other two readings my body and paths of memory and painting were a bit harder to understand on the other hand. My body had a lot of parts to the site and I found it easy to progress, but I could not figure out how to go back to the previous menu. Same with paths of memory and painting which had a lot of information, I had a hard time navigating through so much content. In terms of stylization though, I think paths of memory and painting did the best job.

playing

This hypertext narrative game was pretty interesting. The cautions it gave before the start of the game really helped to set the overall seriousness and mood as well as providing information on how it would progress. I was really drawn to the situation until I realized it wasn't something I can really relate to although I can tell that they tried their best to do so. The hyperlink choices did make a more personalized story, but at one point I could not tell where this was going. It just seemed like an unending loop. At the end when it did end though, I was surprised to see how my thoughts matched up with the intentions of this game to feel endless just like how depression is.