Method in My Madness

What is it?
Method in My Madness is a Twine game written for the 2024 Neo-Twiny Jam as well as the 2024 REALLY BAD IF Jam. Games in the Neo-Twiny Jam must be 500 words or less, and games in the REALLY BAD IF Jam had to be, well, bad. MMM tells the story of a woman obsessed with her neighbor through her disjointed internal thoughts, which are represented by lines of text scattered and jumbled throughout each page. (I don’t think there’s a single HTML formatting option left out!)

What I Liked
I’m going to level with you: I don’t think this is “REALLY BAD”. I think this is actually pretty good! In fact, I’m going to say something I’ve never said before…

…I liked the timed text.

No, but really! I think the timed text and the chaotic formatting have allowed the author, by deliberately throwing all the rules out the window, to find an application where they actually work well. Usually timed text is used to try and create tension by an author who doesn’t trust their work, doesn’t trust the reader, or both, but here it IS the work. MMM portrays a narrator who is desperate, chaotic, and unsure of herself in 500 words or less – no small task – and the various formatting choices do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of getting it across.

Suggestions
Of course, chaotic formatting and timed text is a give and take with the reader, and this did require some patience to see through to the end. Given its aforementioned inclusion into the REALLY BAD IF Jam a lot of this was probably deliberate! But since picking through authorial intent is generally a fool’s errand I’m going to list out the changes I would make to turn this into a “REALLY GOOD” piece of IF.

-I am afraid I don’t know what a “Cauchy” is? I assume it’s the name of the narrator’s target but it’s not a name I’m familiar with. This could absolutely be a me problem, since culture is going to have a big impact on what names any particular person is familiar with, but something more legible to the average English speaker might be a better choice here.
-The formatting and overlapping text was always going to be a nightmare (on purpose) but on my monitor some of the later links to continue were buried under other text and hard to click on (since the “top” text takes priority regardless of the presence of links). Definitely keep link text on the top unless you’re very sure there’s nothing else near it on any size monitor.
-Some of the longer pauses could be replaced by a click to continue without sacrificing anything but avoiding the user thinking the game broke.

Overall Thoughts
Rules are made to be broken, and I think this game is a fantastic example of why. Don’t use timed text in your games – unless it’s as thoughtful and deliberate as in MMM.