Escape from Straightsville

Written By Sarah Garcia; Cover Art By Drea Loredo

Click on the link from the embedded screen above when the page loads to be redirected to the official game! To play through, you can type commands or click on the highlighted words to get a drop-down menu for which actions you can perform. Occasionally pick up objects for your inventory to use later and unlock pathways.

Game's Main Page on Text Adventures:https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/hpce76rviku5ws2z-mytwa/escape-from-strai...

This game has honestly been the most challenging of the games in this collection to create. It has required a good deal of technical work for something that merely seems to be words on a screen. Concessions and reworking of the story and gameplay had to occur over and over again to fit the technology given. While this has all been a frustrating challenge, I still feel the efforts made have payed off. Offering multiple options, multiple paths, and even multiple pointless choices really demonstrates the value that can be found in the text adventure genre. It, unlike normal literature and short stories, allows the reader/player to choose what route they follow and explore the world they are inhabiting as much as they desire to. Going down weird paths and getting every little detail on some insignificant object is part of the fun and the creative potential of the genre. Text adventure games greatly display the queer potential of video games in how they let the player explore various possibilities from several different angles and suspend time so that the individual is never in a rush to make any decision. I chose the game’s color scheme based on the non-binary pride flag’s colors as homage to the identity of the game’s main character, whose name isn’t given until one plays “Roll That Gay Saving Throw!” With this narrative, I wanted to explore how difficult it can be for young queer people at home when they feel they must leave in order to be themselves. The work is very tongue-in-cheek, silly, and fantastical so that queerness is not always filtered through a complete prism of loss and pain and that queer fears can be embodied through genre fiction—something that already happens often in the media we consume. Again, multiple endings are utilized within this narrative to demonstrate how queer people’s experiences exist on a spectrum and there isn’t a singular way to navigate any issue.