Up On Moonlight Hill

Artist Statement:

Inspired by Wanderhome, "Up On Moonlight Hill" is an interactive love story with little animal creatures living in a cozy town. For this project, I defined a "story" as something that has a beginning, middle, and end-- whatever occurs between the two endpoints of the beginning and end is simply the growth of a narrative. This game directly correlates with my Craft of Play statement, in that choices within interactive fiction do not necessarily have to have extreme consequences or effects to have the same result as ones that do. The choices in "Up On Moonlight Hill" are tentative and simple, and may only effect things slightly, such as dialogue, but will ultimately shape the way a player perceives their initial playthrough. 

This is directly inspired by Ted Chiang's "Anxiety Is The Dizziness of Freedom", which can clearly be seen in the amount of choices a player is able to make, yet the endings for each are subtle, and hardly change much. Additionally, I wanted it to be heavily influenced by Wanderhome's themes, where there are no "bad" endings, though some story threads grapple with them regardless. There are no outright rejections, and there are no hard feelings-- "Up On Moonlight Hill" is simply an experience.  Moreover, to get that traditional story atmosphere, I relied on Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook (Revised and Expanded): The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, where he discusses story structures in order to inform the story beats in the game. I was primarily influenced by Freytag's Pyramid, as the game has its inciting incident, rising action, climax, resolution, and denouement; to me, it seemed that this structure would fit the atmosphere of the game. This can be seen in how the player is first introduced to the love interests, the pace slowly increasing as they must decide what (if any) gift to get them, and then finally confess their feelings on Moonlight Hill, where the denouement is the climb-down from that and the love interest expresses their thanks or affection.

In all, "Up On Moonlight Hill" argues one central thing: no matter what choices you may make, the ending of an interactive story may remain the same. In spite of this, your experience with the media is completely and wholly different from everyone else's. The interactivity of "Up On Moonlight Hill" emphasizes this thematic arguments by having a level of depth to its choices, but maintaining a relatively train-tracked ending regardless.

Bibliography

Chiang, Ted. "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom." Medium. Accessed December 10, 2023, https://onezero.medium.com/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freedom-b5ab45cae2a5.

Dragon, Jay. Wanderhome. Possum Creek Games. Tabletop Game, 2021.

Vandermeer, Jeff. Wonderbook (Revised and Expanded): The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. Abrams Image, 2013.