Wayfarers

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/7/25
Playtime: 1.5hr, 3 endngs

Wayfarers is a work firmly on the FICTION side of Interactive fiction, which isn’t to say it is not interactive. It is the story of a soldier recovering from horrific losses that cause her to interrogate her world, her family, and her place in both. It is set in an ill-defined future of endless warfare, advanced technology and all-too-familiar psychological and social pressures.

It is also stunningly, staggeringly, well written. Every scene, whether it be military battles, virtual reality game-world, interpersonal conversations, background lore, all of it drips with verisimilitude, confidence and authority. We are in super firm hands here, gang. The prose is unadorned and insightful, propelling us from one scene to the next like a series of small explosions. I captured so, so many lines, here are a few for flavor:

“I had prayed for my hatred to keep me from being killed, but here I was.”
“We were pretty and white like the main characters of yesteryear.”
“They’ll run out of people before they run out of money.”
“I wanted to tell her that if I had designed this world, it would have been kind.”
“How small a scrap of human would I have needed to be, to be allowed to die?”

Holy crap ya’ll even out of context that stuff ROCKS. In context it is devastating. In story, we jump back and forth between wartime (and to a lesser extent, family) flashbacks, therapy gameplay, and post-combat recovery. Interactivity is used to get the player invested and aligned with the protag - clicks are rarely choices but they ARE shepherding us along the protagonist’s journey and each mandated link another step forward that we take with them. The graphical presentation is tight and effective - the use of color and fonts differentiate and suggest the reality (or gamey unreality) of the current interactions. By the end we are both along for the ride and driving forward for some measure of closure for our protagonist.

The narrative is super controlled - despite the disorienting unreality the protagonist experiences, we the reader are never unclear what aspect of their challenging existence we are experiencing, how important it is, and how it interacts with every other aspect of their recovery. It all builds naturally and dramatically to one of several totally justified and enthralling twists, leading to a final choice we DO get to make on her behalf. Having plumbed all the endings, let me just say I find it impossible to think any one of them would disappoint the buildup. We’re all going to have a favorite and boy do I. To the end, the story retains its stubborn difficulty. There is no ‘story book’ tightly knotted resolution, just a measure of closure in a still-messy life with frustrating gaps eluding protagonist control. But definitive closure nonetheless.

I was blown away by this entry. You can probably tell I am dancing around the core of this thing, relying on my superlatives to carry how smitten I was with it. I do this deliberately. With some works I might be tempted to pull apart the themes of the piece, dissect characterization or compositions, all in an effort to convince myself I have a full handle on the author’s intent and/or the work’s impact. Here, I feel the writing is SO precise, none of it is uncertain or ambiguous. It is a tale so well told, creating complexity then navigating us through it so sure-handedly, it really doesn’t need anything from me but the most minimal endorsement I can provide.

“Wow.”

I think that’s as concise as I will ever get.

Horror Icon: Regan/Pazuzu
Vibe: PTSD
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, I would marvel that I were capable of such an affecting story. Which of course, I am not. So in spite, I would tweak two small technical issues: I would add a back link in the Credits, and cut the timed delay at game’s start in half. That’s it, man.

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