[For your Bloggers Wanted assignment last week, you were asked to write about a game you thought was relatively obscure; one that a lot of your peers likely hadn’t played or even heard of. Our first promoted blog is from Redtail, who is a big fan of a little known work of Interactive Fiction calledViolet. Want to see your own blog on the front page? Write a blog onthe current topic: Villains. — JRo]
I am a chronic procrastinator. I have finished papers literally seconds before turning them in. I have pulled all-nighters trying desperately to complete take-home exams that I’ve had for a week. I even managed to make a legitimate hobby out of it in high school.
So it’s no small surprise that I fell in love with this game while explicitlynotwriting my philosophy paper.
Violetis a text adventure. Yes, as you might have seen on the front page once in a blue moon, text adventures (more commonly called Interactive Fiction) still exist. There are even a few competitions for them each year. In fact, one such competition brought this game to my attention about two years ago; I was trying to come up with a clever thesis about Joseph Schumpeter, and thought that a few quick puzzles would relax my brain.
Violetis a game about procrastination, or rather the consequences thereof. You are a grad student, whose only hurdle to actual graduation is the dissertation. Unfortunately, you’ve languished here for years, you haven’t written anything in five months, and your titular Aussie girlfriend is tired of waiting. She has set an ultimatum: finish it today, or she leaves. Of course, as anybody who has written a paper the morning it was due knows, this is not an easy task. There are any number of distractions one must overcome: the beautiful outdoors, your books, the internet, etc. You need to ignore all of that. You need to just sit down, and write. Please, just write.
Violet lovingly narrates the game herself, peppering the descriptions with stories about your relationship. Nearly everything in your office has a memory within it, including numerous objects lovingly made for you by Violet (a fact that she never neglects to tell you). She is there for every moment of your agony, encouraging you, begging you, threatening you to write.
There are plenty of things that I love about this game: the puzzles are both logical and challenging, the writing is damn near perfect, and the characters feel like real people. You can get so tied up in reading the interesting stories that Violet tells, you almost forget the point of the game (yes, I think this was intentional). But in the end, none of those are the reasons that I’ve become a sort of evangelist for this game. I will tell anybody who I think has a remote chance of being interested aboutViolet. And most of these people look at me like I’m insane. Although a rock star within it’s genre, most of the wider world is unimpressed by black text on a white background with a command prompt.
But this is a game that I want to spread. BecauseVioletis not just a game about procrastination; it’s about priorities. Choosing what is and is not important to you. Ultimately, I’ve realized, that is what procrastination is all about. And that is all I can think about every time I play it (which is basically every time I have a paper due the next day). Why am I procrastinating? Do I really want to be here? Is this really the life I want for the next 30, 40, 50 years?Violethas kept these questions in the forefront of my mind.
Besides, how can you not like a game that accepts the command HETERONORMATIVITY OFF?
If you want to playVioletwithout downloading an interpreter, you may gohere. I cannot recommend it enough, especially if you should be doing something important.
