You Can Only Turn Left

I don't believe it is possible to discuss this title as a "Twine game" but as an experience: it creates visions of a state so unfamiliar to me that it invites me to wander alongside it and learn about it through iteration.

Nothing in this resembles the dreams I have: text blurs into other text, the narrator wakes up but finds himself dreaming again, pink hyenas appear, a plethora of images and roars clash with the player, etc. but there is a kind of lucidity to the narration. The narrator is awake but not quite because they are under the influence of drugs. It's also not quite like what I think of as hallucinations because the symbolic imagery resembles the memories of the character. This state where the real and familiar become tainted with the nightmarish uncanniness of dreams is -- as the game says -- sometimes charming and sometimes horrifying. To be conscious in this state is to see the mundane disappear into the ether, to watch memories emerge as dreams manifest into reality.

While it may be comfortable for me to rationalize this as another example of the false dichotomy between dreams and reality, I think this work is trying to get at something more practical about how we experience the world:

The hypnagogic state can be defined as “spontaneously appearing visual, auditory and kinaesthetic images; qualitatively unusual thought processes and verbal constructions; tendencies towards extreme suggestibility; symbolic representations of ongoing mental and physiological processes; and so on” (Schacter, 1976, 452–453). Schacter noted that the most common factor of these phenomena was their occurrence in the drowsy interval between the waking state and sleeping.

(Source: The hypnagocic state: A brief update by Roman Ghibellini and Beat Meier)

I had never heard of hypnagogic states before playing this game and only looked them up after reading the game description on the Spring Thing website. But I find this description familiar to me now: as I followed the hyperlinks, I found myself meditating on the liminal state between waking and dreaming.

I can't say that I've experienced this state, but I've wondered about other media that deal with this particular blurring of reality. The work of David Lynch comes to mind: his films don't just have bizarre symbolic imagery, but they are ultra-sensitive to how sensory everything is. Reality in these kinds of works is ultra-phenomenal: every mundane sensation seems to matter a little too much, and the sensory overload the game evokes is frightening yet fascinating.

And all of this is achieved through decent writing, clever use of text effects, and some memorable background images that move around the screen. These effects create an otherworldly atmosphere, and I wonder if the fact that some text is unreadable (yellow-white text on yellow-white backgrounds) is one of the tools the game uses to disorient you.

You Can Only Turn Left is a deeply memorable experience for me. I can't predict how other reviewers will feel about this title, but as for me, it gave me a few seconds to ponder about how the perception of reality is sometimes a bunch of dreams and fictions. A kind of mixed reality, if you will. I'm definitely biased as someone who enjoys reading about the philosophy and psychology of perception, but it really is a unique work and I hope people get to experience it.