Interview Interview

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/4/25
Playtime: 30m, 3 playthroughs

Welcome game! So glad you could make it today, the panel and I liked what we saw in the CV. If you don’t have any questions for us, shall we get started? Wonderful! It says here you name is.. oh, that.. oh. That’s unfortunate. I see here we are conducting an Interview Interview Interview. Hrm. Well nothing for it but to power on, yes?

Let’s establish the basics. You are a Twine-based Dialogue tree game, yes? Oh no, it’s fine. The recent regime has insisted we ARE allowed to ask these kinds of questions. It may be mandatory. So, Dialogue Tree? Yes, good.

And playable in 30 minutes or less? No, we don’t have a specific requirement, just like to know where we stand. 30 minutes, then, good.

I see here you feature statistics and achievements, yes? Presumably to encourage replay? Don’t be embarrassed, no one is judging you. On THAT I mean.

Excellent, you’re doing great, now let’s get a bit deeper. Are you satisfied that you achieved your mission statement of *checks notes* I’m going to paraphrase, ‘exploring the artificial characters we create of ourselves in interviews?’ Well yes, it is an open ended question, that’s kind of how these things go. Ok, I’ll focus the question for you a bit. You present a few different scenarios: a fawning, celebrity interview, a traditional job interview, an interpersonal service interview, and a romantic ‘interview.’ For most of those, you present four, and only four lanes of response each with its own layer of artificiality. What’s that? Oh no, you definitely CAST one as ‘truth’ but that’s not really accurate, is it? I mean, unless the player happens to share EXACTLY the same neuroses as the protagonist, it’s just another role being played, this one to perhaps satisfy the game rather than the interviewer. You don’t see it? Hm, let’s drill into the personal trainer then.

The trainer scenario distinguishes itself as breaking the mold of the others by presenting binary yes/no questions rather than a range. Should the player not meet the trainer’s expectations, they are rejected. The binary questions are cast as even more tightly exploring the ‘truth/not truth’ boundary. Except, sometimes a PLAYER’S actual ‘truth’ response is interpreted as falsehood, and the way to progress (or at least lock in a game-motivating achievement) is to falsely align to the interviewer’s perception of truth… why are you smiling? Oh I see. You are exposing how goal motivation can pervert even a nominally ‘true to yourself’ path into another flavor of ‘navigating what the interviewer wants to hear.’

*laughs* Well, that makes this whole interview a bit awkward, doesn’t it? Heh, let’s power on anyway. Two final questions. Are you aware of the dissonance in the romantic interview? By casting it as fully artificial as the other scenarios, the work rejects the intrinsic value of true romantic partnership, making the ‘prize’ less desirable but nevertheless casting the player as seeking it anyway. (For a bit at least) Yes, certainly I see the resonances it is trying to strike for a protagonist struggling with insecurity. By ignoring other, more obvious motivations in that encounter though, the very scenario impeaches itself as perhaps not as universal or resonant as portrayed. What is my question? Hm, right, I don’t seem to have one there after all.

The final question is spoilery, so members of the panel that have not finished the game should recuse themselves now. Given the final denouement, which draws a pretty clear line between ‘satisfying interview goals’ and (Spoiler - click to show)‘mechanical responses of a lizard brain,’ not to mention the cheeky author-insert who refuses to clarify things, how do we come away with a higher understanding of goal-seeking artificiality, other than just recognizing ‘yup, that’s a dynamic?’ What I mean is, both in text and meta, the message is ‘when presented with artificial choices, we respond artificially.’ Sure. Agreed. What is the game telling us about that, other than the dynamic’s existence, and perhaps its inherent ludicrousness? The stated goals of the work were about ‘deforming reality by responding to artificiality’ but we didn’t see that. We saw responses in kind, insulated from reality but too obviously transactional to actually impact that reality. Was there something we missed?

Hmmm. Yes, ok, thank you, we’ll make a note of that. And thank you for coming by today, we appreciate your interest. What? Oh, we’ll take a few days, discuss your case and let you know. Yes, we’ll call… what’s that? You have some questions for me? Wait, are you really attempting to conduct an…

Interview Interview Interview INTERVIEW???

Bold move, Cotton.

Horror Icon: Freddie, though a case for Carrie
Vibe: Absurdist
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : No, we haven’t made a decision yet, but the panel would like to provide some constructive feedback. We think perhaps stating the goals of the work so baldly, and in such elevated terms, in the “About” section actually undermine the impact of the work. It sets a very high bar the work cannot quite clear. The work still has clever things to say, and true panache in its construction, there is no need to set lofty expectations that unfairly burden it. We would recommend trimming it to just the first three paragraphs.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Note: This review was written during Spring Thing 2025, and originally posted in the intfiction forum on 7 April 2025.

This is an episodic Twine game about interviews, and the choices you can make during them, and how you are perceived.

Initially I was thrown by the opening, not what I expected. But then the story runs through a sequence of chapters, each with an original take on the idea of an interview, while also moving the plot and your character’s story forward.

It’s nicely done, and the player has choices about whether to deliberately shape how they are presented, or to give perhaps more honest and personal answers.

The later parts of the game are interesting and unexpected, in a way that totally surprised me. But also made me think.

At the very end you can see statistics about the overall pattern of your choices and achievements you unlocked.

Note the game has ambient music for much of it, but I found listening to this very distracting as I was trying to read the text on screen. So I turned my sound off.

It starts off pretty entertainingly. You attend a series of interviews (not just the job interview kind) and get to pick from one of four responses ranging from professional to cringe. The writing was really entertaining, and I was seriously flirting with the idea of giving five stars at that time. The section on a romantic date left a silly grin on my face for some time.

Meanwhile, I was wondering about the lizard on the cover art. However, the answer came soon.

I'm not sure what I should say about the story's ending. I don't know if it's just so brilliant that my small brain can't comprehend it, or if it was just a dumb idea. (Spoiler - click to show)It turns out that the whole thing was just a reptile dreaming about human life, then a play about that reptile dreaming about human life, then a reptile dreaming about that play about the reptile which was... aaargh. Ok, I think that's all the layers. It was just multiple levels of the 'just a dream' trope, and I'm not sure if there's some brilliance somewhere I'm missing.

That said, the earlier parts were still very entertaining to read. I'm giving four stars for that. Now, I need some time to unscramble my brain.