Dying A Little (Inside)

I’ve always liked self-referential media, like the opera Capriccio about writing opera. That extends to interactive fiction; Creatures Such as We is in my top 10 favorite IF of all time, and it’s full of discussions about game writing.

This short ectocomp game is about writing a short ectocomp game. I had to laugh at the end when I read that it was ‘based on a true story’. The author goes through a very similar process to me when needing to write: procrastinating, researching, hanging out online, and then having inspiration strike.

It’s fun to see ‘the process’ from someone else’s viewpoint, like reading someone’s written remembrances of your deceased grandfather and realizing that they knew the same person as you but in a different way.

This also made me think of how the process must work as this author (with her co-author) has 2 of the top 100 most-rated games of the 2020s and 3 of the highest-rated games of the 2020s on IFDB, so there’s a good chance anyone who’s been around the last five years has experienced and enjoyed the team’s work.