Bad Feeling. Behind seeing-thing. In you-place.

January 21, 2013 2:44 AM

Reset is a game about the bizarre, frightening, and exciting possibilities for kink in the cyborg / transhuman future.

via Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
posted by Elementary Penguin (18 comments total)

A warning: Reset keeps track of game state in a number of ways, so unlike a lot of other Twine games, pressing Back in your browser will reset to the beginning of the game, rather than taking you back to the previous page.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:53 AM on January 21, 2013

Oh wow, this is good. Just when I thought it loops around endlessly, the story shifts.

Thanks.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:54 AM on January 21, 2013

Pleasantly surprised that it works just fine on iPad. My choices landed me back where I started, but definitely an interesting concept. We'll see what happens on play through two.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:58 AM on January 21, 2013

Per the man of twists and turns, keep playing if you loop back to the beginning.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 4:01 AM on January 21, 2013

Yeah, I got through one complete story arc, with a couple of resets, but now I have to go back and see if there is a different ending at all if I make a different choice at one point, or if it will still lead to the same resolution. Interesting!
posted by taz at 4:06 AM on January 21, 2013

I don't know anything about D/S relationships, but I know software a bit and I think someone in this story is doing it wrong. I hope my brain has stack traces and remote logging in the future.
posted by vanar sena at 4:56 AM on January 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I loved this. The author's postmortem I also found really rewarding. It's such a boon to get new voices interested in interactive storytelling, now that the barrier to entry has been almost completely worn down—the tool this was made with, Twine, makes getting started writing this kind of hypertext fiction approximately as easy as writing blog posts, to give you some idea. Thanks to it, I have some new favourite authors.
posted by seikleja at 5:01 AM on January 21, 2013 [4 favorites]

Definitely read seikleja's link to the author's postmortem after playing- there are some really interesting insights, and a clarification that the ending might not have been clear to some players. (It wasn't to me.)
posted by dubold at 5:15 AM on January 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Very cool. Thanks for sharing. Wish I had something more concrete to add. I think I found more enjoyment by not knowing what to expect, so best to leave it at that.
posted by Stagger Lee at 6:42 AM on January 21, 2013

Maybe this sort of thing isn't my cup of tea (never been a fan of hypertext fiction, myself), but I tried playing this a couple of times now, and I really don't get it. Certainly not enough to keep replaying it in hopes of something interesting to happen.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:43 AM on January 21, 2013

I liked it (especially since I played it right after waking up, when my own senses and sense of self were recalibrating, to say the least). The ending could be a little clearer, since it's not entirely clear what has been going on -- that postmortem was really helpful and interesting.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:16 AM on January 21, 2013

It's especially interesting to me that you have a rather different sort of outcome (while it's still very, very simple/minimal with the forks and recursion) if you "submit" more or "defy" more. I was an initial defiant, which made it a bit harder for me to get to the reveal... which I'm still not sure I'm totally understanding as meant, despite reading the post-mortem. :)
posted by taz at 9:32 AM on January 21, 2013

This certainly captures the probability of a new sexual orifice in the future. The implication being that if you can play doctor with it then it can be played with. Writing it as a kink actually downplays the significance of this point. If the story were instead about a first time rooting, between two naive and inexperienced cyborgs, well, that would be a far more uncomfortable read.

Was Inception a rape fantasy?
posted by TwelveTwo at 9:38 AM on January 21, 2013

So I get home from the hospital, look at a note, send some friend requests and then I get no more choices. Have I failed?
posted by Lucien Dark at 10:30 AM on January 21, 2013

If you keep looking at the posters, you will recover a memory, and shortly thereafter someone will come to your apartment.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:34 AM on January 21, 2013

I got the memory, but this is what I mean, I literally have no options to click on; I can't even go back to the posters as the option isn't there anymore :-( Maybe my browser messed up, I'll give it another go...
posted by Lucien Dark at 10:36 AM on January 21, 2013

That was pretty great. There was a neat tension about not wanting to use the safe word to punch out even when events were turning disturbing because that would've ended the story (or so I feared, but in retrospect maybe not)/be like taking the blue pill etc.
posted by juv3nal at 12:24 PM on January 21, 2013

Oh wow, that was cool.
posted by a hat out of hell at 8:30 PM on January 21, 2013