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Splinter Zone

A Game about escaping Eternal Punishment

Free Verse Poem Generation

Goal: The player character has no frame of reference for their existence, so how would they try and make sense of their situation/keep track of the passage of time in general.

Idea: Splinter Zone creates a randomised sequence out of pre-built levels, and levels are further sorted via their overall difficulty. This means that a run has a specific rhythm to it. Associate a short line of text with each level, and create a free-verse poem out of them, while the players are playing the game.

Execution: (You can look up the poems by opening the “track.run” file with a text editor, in case you don’t want to play through the entire game. You can find the file in the game’s save-folder (...username/appdata/local/Splinter_Zone)).

Here’s an excerpt from my current save file:

it just never stops

i just want to rest

my head hurts

Is anyone listening to me?

resignation

the colours hurt my eyes

destroy this fake existence

i'm not allowed to fail

the heat is unbearable

stress

i am a human being