{"id":17954,"date":"2017-02-13T10:28:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T15:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=17954"},"modified":"2017-02-13T10:28:32","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T15:28:32","slug":"the-anachronist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=17954","title":{"rendered":"The Anachronist"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the year 1596, Anna\u00a0is about to be burned at the stake. As the constable prepares to light the fire below her, she can do nothing but seek a solution in her own memory and imagination.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Anachronist<\/em><\/a> is a\u00a0game in which you make choices that determine the outcome. By increasing Anna\u2019s knowledge, you can create opportunities for her to act. By decreasing the entropy or disorder of the whole situation, you can raise the odds that the ending will be a happy one for all of the characters. If you try to conclude\u00a0the story while\u00a0knowledge is too low or\u00a0entropy is too high, Anna\u00a0will burn.<\/p>\n

At the same time, The Anachronist<\/em><\/a> is literary fiction. With as many words as a novel, it\u2019s indebted to authors like Joyce, Borges, Calvino, and Pamuk. It uses\u00a0modernist and post-modernist literary techniques\u2013as well as an interactive format\u2013to explore questions\u00a0of perspective, historical change, and truth.<\/p>\n

Emily Short writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Anachronist<\/a>\u00a0is a Twine piece\u00a0by Peter Levine<\/a>. It\u2019s long, and paced like a novel rather than like a short story or a poem; it very much belongs to the category of readerly IF [Interactive Fiction<\/a>].\u00a0…<\/p>\n

As for what it\u2019s about, that is a little more difficult to describe. The protagonist is being burned at the stake in 1598 (perhaps), but in the moment that she stands in the flame, her mind wanders. She imagines her surroundings in Oxford, or possibly a painting of her surroundings; she thinks about alchemy, the art of memory, the intellectual commitments of a former teacher.<\/p>\n

Your task is an abstract one, to do things that globally increase knowledge or decrease entropy. Part of the gameplay involves recognizing and selecting anachronistic references; those links aren\u2019t highlighted for you, but if you succeed in finding something, that counts against entropy.<\/p>\n

The knowledge aspect is a little trickier.\u00a0Most of the choices at least in the early stages of the story are choices either to look more closely at some aspect of the world or else to move onward.\u00a0My impression was that looking more closely would often increase knowledge, but I\u2019m not certain how consistently that was applied. Some choices overtly claim to have changed your knowledge\/entropy status, but I\u2019m not sure that there aren\u2019t other, covert alterations.<\/p>\n

I have not yet had the time to read the whole thing.\u00a0One<\/em> of the themes so far is a meditation on cultural contact, on how people portray and understand those from other cultures. But that is definitely not the only thing going on,\u00a0and I\u2019d need to finish the piece in order to say much more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s been online for about three weeks. Some other early readers’ responses are\u00a0here<\/a>. Or\u00a0click to enter the world of\u00a0The Anachronist.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the year 1596, Anna\u00a0is about to be burned at the stake. As the constable prepares to light the fire below her, she can do nothing but seek a solution in her own memory and imagination. The Anachronist is a\u00a0game in which you make choices that determine the outcome. By increasing Anna\u2019s knowledge, you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-verse-and-worse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17954"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18089,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17954\/revisions\/18089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}