Hey everyone, just some random thoughts! I was doing a bit of a deconstruction the other day on why I’m making certain writing decisions, and it occurred to me that interactive fiction often seems to fall on a sliding scale of worldbuilding from “Empty Space” to “Maximalist”, each with its own impacts on the story’s impact and feeling.
EMPTY SPACE
On one end, my shorter games like Nereid and Raishall (the ones that triggered this rabbit hole for me looking into it), as well as a number of others like Donor, Rent-a-Vice, The Grim and I, and Blood for Poppies would likely fall over on the far end of Empty Space. (You might be noticing a bit of a dark theme coming out there!)
They’re rarer in Choicescript and tend to leave large sections of the “outside world” or “lore” outside of the immediate storyline deliberately blank. They hyper-focus down on isolated characters, leaving the “void” outside of that to be filled in by the reader’s imagination. It’s a good tool for creating storylines that focus on dark, mysterious vibes with emotional payoffs, letting the reader over-analyse the few details that are given in the text. At its extreme end, it turns the focus inwards and makes the world shrink. It doesn’t necessarily mean that nothing is described in detail, the storyline is just very selective on what it chooses to focus on.
As well as being good for creating uncertainty and mystery in storylines, it can also remove the need to supply a lot of worldbuilding that can be more easily contradicted if not careful to track, and allow storylines to get going faster without needing more extensive lore dumps and explanations that could start to feel unnecessary or tedious in games building a particular mood or pacing.
MAXIMALIST WORLD BUILDERS
On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the true Maximalist worldbuilders. They tend to be more encyclopedic, describing things in more detail like the larger world, politics and historical lore. They add to the universe to make it broader, rather than subtracting to narrow it down. Think The Golden Rose or Life of a Wizard.
They tend to lay out everything you need to know to make the world feel finished, rather than asking the reader to fill in the blanks with existing memories or pure imagination. They make the universe feel wider rather than narrowed right down to a single point in the darkness so to speak. They naturally lend themselves to bigger, grander scales and power-fantasy type games (though not exclusively if they focus down more on the character scale).
They can benefit from making worlds feel complete, vast and lived in, but can be more difficult to get the balance of giving the amount of detail needed to the reader, while not slowing the storyline down too much in order to build the world from the ground up, and needs more careful attention as gaps in knowledge will seem jarring rather than there by design (such as in empty space) and contradictions can happen more easily if the world is inconsistent within itself.
THE SLIDING SCALE OF IMPLIED KNOWLEDGE
Then in the middle, you have a sliding scale of Implied Knowledge.
Over on the Empty Space side of this middle ground, you tend to find a lot of mythology games that assume knowledge about the background myths and world they are set in, while still trying to preserve some of the mystery. Some games can pull themselves out of this category in one direction or another by heavily deconstructing the folklore they are based on to subvert the “memory” of what should be to create uncertainty (headed towards Empty Space), or by giving more detail to fill in the blanks and create a more stable, known world. (Pulls it further towards Maximalist Worldbuilding). Highlands, Deep Waters is a great example of an Empty Space with implied knowledge game. It pulls heavily from Lovecraftian lore so you know a lot of what to expect without a lore dump on every little thing while keeping the empty space aesthetic for uncertainty and tension.
Moving further towards the Maximalist side, but still using Implied Knowledge, I think you find games like The Parenting Simulator, Crème de la creme, Dragon of Steelthorne, and Highway Wars. These are a lot more grounded in detail, but they assume basic knowledge of the aspects they are depicting without over-explaining them to one degree or another. (For example- universal life milestones in Parenting, school rules and roles in Crème, Mad Max and apocalyptic tropes in Highway Wars, and steampunk aesthetics in Steelthorne). You can often differentiate these by how much worldbuilding influence or management the player has, and how much lore is supplied. The stat page is a good place to start looking. They make the world feel like a larger and complete, rather than a focusing down on an isolated segment of it. But don’t necessarily spend large amounts of time breaking down hyper specifics of everything in the world because they assume you already know something of it.
THE TEST: KNOWLEDGE VS. MEMORY
A good test to see how far a game has gone away from the ends of the spectrum and into the Implied Knowledge area is to ask- what ratio of the knowledge you need is coming from the game vs. your own memory?
In Donor (More towards true Empty Space): You don’t know exactly who Paul is or what his weaknesses are past the absolute basics. You just know you’re trapped in a very small space with limited options. You know he’s a vampire and you’re in immediate danger, but exactly what you need to do to survive and the true motives of everyone around you are murky. You can pull from a bit of basic vampire knowledge, but the game is deliberately opaque leaving you uncertain exactly how much of what you think you know is definitely true.
To contrast Highlands, Deep Waters (Empty Space with Implied Knowledge): It’s still creepy and uncertain, but your memory can do a lot of the heavy lifting by piecing together what you know has happened in Lovecraft’s other works. It comes as no surprise to the player that the cultists are trying to bring the Old Ones back with rituals, chanting, and sacrifices, or that Cthulhu or someone like him will likely rise from the sea if they’re successful, even without the text explicitly telling you.
TRICKY GAMES
Some games were a bit tricky to my mind. Night Road feels like it should be over on the Empty Space-Implied Knowledge side at first glance because you start off relatively alone in a dark, creepy, folklore themed environment. But it actually contains an extensive codex with rules mapped out, heavy stat tracking (including a concrete skill focus rather than mood), and dense world building.
Another one (might not be as familiar as it’s non-choicescript but I couldn’t think of a better example of it, is Swigian. It is aggressively (and purposely) light on the text and description. (“I don’t like talking. Let’s build a fire.”) It feels like it should be right over on the far end of the empty space side of worldbuilding, but I think it fits better with the implied knowledge group. Despite deliberately limiting worldbuilding, your memory will sooner or later twig that it is heavily referencing a certain Nordic story (keeping it vague for spoilers) and starts filling in the blanks to make the world feel complete.
Some games I couldn’t really decide where they fitted (or if they’re even just outside this system). I’m certainly no expert on this sort of thing and may well have got some stuff wrong, but just had some fun going down the rabbit hole.
Anyway, just some ramblings! Agree? Disagree where I’ve placed games on the scale? How do you think your own games or favourites fit into this? Do you tend to deliberately you write to a certain aesthetic (planner), or are you more of pantser and go for it and see what pans out and seems to fit?
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