Closure

Spring, 2018
I defend my MFA thesis. My central argument is that form and content are inseparable. There is always form, as the absence of form is itself a form. I tell the committee: "Shape is meaning."

Spring, 2023
The deadline for Spring Thing is two days away, so it is nearly time for me to submit my debut game, Repeat the Ending. Nothing is coming out right. The website doesn't display images, or else they are the wrong size. The links and colors don't match my intent. The form is wrong. "1,000 hours and 18 months of work and you can't get it right," I say to myself, disgusted. "How could you let this happen?"

December, 2023
I open a forum thread "The Bisquixe interpreter for Inform 7 and Inform 10." I discover that there is a new method for adding visual effects to Inform games. Because the code is Inform, I vaguely understand it. "This is something," I think, "that I could do."

While there are many examples of Bisquixe code posted to the thread, the one that interests me the most mimics the text bubbles of an instant messaging thread. That code, I learn, is inspired by Sarah Wilson's Closure.

March, 2026
Closure is an Inform game that combines form and content to great effect. Visually, the text scrolls down the page in the familiar bubble shapes of a text messaging application. Rhetorically, Closure reads like a series of text messages, and Kira, our digital conversant, speaks in a truncated, acronym-infused voice that complements the shape of the text.

There is no "make a text messaging conversation game" button in the Inform development environment. What we see in this presentation is indicative of consideration, intentionality, and inspired ideation. Admirably, the writing complies with the constraints of the situation: the standard craft language of item descriptions is foregone in the name of structural coherence. Everything remains imminently playable, despite language tweaked to suit the occasion.

In terms of the story itself, this is an uncomfortable game in which we, a player-named friend and witness, trade messages with Kira, a recently-dumped college student. Kira has just broken into her ex-boyfriend's dorm room. There is a feeling that we have been dragged into something wrong and cannot leave. Perhaps we are staring agape at an accident in progress.

During gameplay, we suggest actions to Kira. If we tell her to "examine the desk," she will gamely do so. Her responses are credibly in-voice in a consistent way. I did note that some standard actions have disabled commands, and I find it better to provide custom responses to actions that do not work within a game.

I've observed that other readers have criticized the end of the game, and I understand where they are coming from. (Spoiler - click to show)Given the transgressive and rather uncomfortable set-up of the game, I found Kira's epiphany pat and anticlimactic. This was the only real misstep in a work that I otherwise found taut and engaging.

Despite my criticisms, I must again repeat that I admire Closure's investment in formal innovation. I appreciate the way that its language is aligned to its shape. In the time since I first played it, I've spent a significant amount of time researching and developing visual effects in parser games. I've built my own code based on the text bubble concept. In my own experience as a creator, inspiration is precious and hard to come by. Given all that I've taken from it, it is only fitting that I grant Closure a 5-star rating.