Blossom, NY

Blossom, NY is interactive nonfiction—a researched history of a real community, presented like a brief guided tour. This is cool to see! I often wonder why there isn’t more interactive nonfiction storytelling. It would be interesting to see more experiments like this.

Structure-wise, this tour isn’t linear, because the game jumps around via hypertext, as if you’re encouraging your meandering tour guide to expound on whatever topic you’re particularly interested in. (I appreciated the game making sure we were situated by explaining how this would work ahead of time.) At first this nonlinear presentation made it harder for me to understand things, with historical facts revealed out of order, and even some future reflections from a couple years after the tour took place. But as the same highlighted topics kept appearing in different passages, I began to see more clearly the matrix of connections between present, past, and more distant past. I wonder if this repetitive presentation might actually help with learning.

Overall, this mini tour didn’t feel to me like storytelling as much as a history lesson for educational purposes. As a picky reader with a wandering mind, I felt myself grasping for a deeper present-day story layered over the history: Why was the narrator there? Who are they, and how did they discover what they know about this hamlet? When the narrator said something like “Last time I saw [this house] was before they put [the vinyl siding] on,” I wanted to hear the rest of that story. This is probably my IF habit kicking in, but I wonder if a little personal storytelling—whether true or fictional—would’ve made my visit more captivating. Then again, maybe here the point is to educate more than to captivate. And that it certainly did.

This was a fascinating game. It’s a tour of a city with building pictures and a variety of destinations to pick from, which can all be selected eventually.

I thought it was completely fictional at first, then saw real elements, but Google and Google maps simply don’t recognize Blossom, NY at all. Looking up the Ebenezer society, which features prominently in the game, led me to West Seneca. Eventually, looking at Google maps, I found Blossom.

The story is similar to many in my own life. The Ebenezer Society paralleled the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which started in upstate New York before migrating to the Midwest, and which had a history of leaving behind buildings that were eventually appropriated for other uses (including a temple, where we believe Christ visited, being used as a barn!). The pictures look like Westlake Ohio, where my ex’s grandmother lived and which had experience some decline while remaining beautiful in its own way.

It gives the feel of a real community. I can almost smell and feel the wind in such a town.

The narrative was a bit dry, but the format was an enjoyable one for the digestion of such material. Which is why I didn’t download the grad report, as the same information in static form would not thrill me as much.

Welcome to Blossom, NY! Glad you could make it! Let’s start the tour, shall we?

Blossom, NY is a cute explorative Twine piece in which you are guided through the titular town, and learn about its history through snapshots of the different buildings (real ones from the author!). I really liked the enthusiastic tone of the guide telling me about all of it, with commentaries from the author intertwined here and there. And that every page was neatly listed at the end of the game, so you wouldn’t miss a thing.

It was cool to see IF as an educational tool, and I got to learn some neat stuff about a tiny little town today.