On text adventure “Spider and Web”
YouTube series on interactive fiction debuts with ’90s espionage gem
Arcweave just launched a new video series dedicated to interactive fiction — aka text adventures or text games. In each episode, we take a look at the finest and most famous examples of interactive fiction and hopefully acquire some wisdom on game narrative design.
In the first episode, we take a look at the ’90s espionage thriller Spider and Web by Andrew Plotkin. It is a parser game written on Inform 6 that won five XYZZY Awards in 1998 and has been rated first on the list of Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time.
The game has outstanding merit in language, mechanics, character development, and plot. What we particularly focus on in this episode, though, is the exceptionally good use of the unreliable narrator — and player character, in our case.
The setting
The story opens with you casually wandering as a tourist around the capital of some unspecified country. You have just reached a back alley of some nondescript brick building featuring a metallic door without a handle.
You carry nothing and — unable to open the door — you casually stroll away.
CUT TO: You are now imprisoned on a chair inside that very building, while a mysterious interrogator questions you about your methods and intentions. The previous scene was actually the story you tried (and failed) to sell him, of you being an innocent sightseer.
So he asks you to tell the truth. And to do that, you replay the first scene, but in a way that sounds more believable to your interrogator.
And this is the first example of how this story uses the element of the unreliable narrator in an original and organic way.
Plot flow
This pattern of replaying the steps that don’t make sense to your captor continues during the first half of the game.
If we put those story beats on an Arcweave board, we can see the scenes of the past (the green—sorry, vert amande elements, representing the story you tell) and the scenes of the interrogation (maroon — er… amb — er ombr — well, brick red, in the present moment).
I. The first scene is, as we’ve said, the first version of the story you tell your interrogator: you are carrying nothing, you reach a door you can’t open, and walk away from the alley.
II. Cut to the present, and the interrogator doesn’t believe you.
III. Back to the first scene, to play a second version of the story. Again, there is not much you can do, so you try to force the door open, to no avail.
IV. Back to the present, the interrogator still doesn’t believe you. Moreover, he now introduces a lockpick that they have apparently confiscated from you.
V. Back to the first scene for a third version of how it played out. Now, if you take inventory, you actually carry that lockpick and you can use it to open the door.
VI. Back to the present, the interrogator is now satisfied with your story, allowing you to go on with it. Furthermore, he prompts you to reveal every other equipment you may have been carrying.
Mystery and surprise
Very soon you realise that, in order to beat the game, you must figure out what your character knows, which you — and your antagonist — don’t.
Regarding what the protagonist, the antagonist, and the player know, there is a wonderful dance of mystery and surprise escalating to the unforgettable (and famous among players) moment of your escape from the interrogation chair; none other than the puzzle that won the Best Individual Puzzle of the 1998 XYZZY Awards.
Play it
Andrew Plotkin’s Spider and Web is a superb game and we hope we have intrigued you to go and play it. You can download it from IFDB and run it on any of the various interactive fiction interpreters out there (one of them written by Plotkin himself) or play it on your browser, on the author’s website.
Moreover, if interactive fiction strikes a chord, stick around Arcweave’s YouTube channel, for more episodes on wonderful text games.
Finally, if you design your own games and interactive stories, you may find Arcweave helpful. Use it to organise your material, turn your ideas into a playable prototype, and even publish it as a choice-based game to share with the world.
Let the games begin!
Giannis G. Georgiou is a writer and story consultant focusing on subjects of narrative structure, theory, and technique. He is content writer and creator in Arcweave.
