Our Bleak-Ass Writing Competition at the Ragged Verge of Spacetime

From imaginary games jam. OBAWCATRVOS (OH­-baw­-CAT­-tra­-vos) is a four­-player paper-based collaborative/competitive writing event which takes place at the end of the universe. Based on the review:

Spelunking the Soul

Perhaps it’s conceited to review the fruits of one’s own efforts, but given the other 3 humans still in existence are the authors, I am the only one left who can review it. My name is Bernardo Contrarius, and full disclosure I commissioned the writing of this interactive fiction.

It was all made possible by the creation of the first functioning time machine in 2066. In my youthful enthusiasm, I used the device to fulfil a lifelong dream. I plucked Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allen Poe from the heights of their respective careers and brought them together to collaborate on a single, definitive work of interactive fiction.

Unfortunately, in the process, I irreversibly destroyed the timeline leading to our now being trapped in the void, living in a milesquare field of gradually fraying reality.

But it was all worth it.

The result was Spelunking the Soul, the greatest work of interactive fiction ever written. Carroll’s unbridled whimsy and Verne’s scientific inquiry are tied together by Poe’s wonderfully macabre insights. The result is an epic work that spans the breadth of imagination and the depth of the human condition. The final choice is a moral and existential catch22 that leaves me torn to this day and will doubtless continue to gnaw at me until our little patch of universe collapses into nothing.

I give it 10/10. It’s sublime I just wish there were more people around to appreciate it!