The Connection
A branching sci-fi interactive fiction project about identity, shared consciousness, trust, and the consequences of technological progress.
Context
2025 | Creative Writing & Directing | Solo Project
Technologies
Twine · HTML/CSS
Roles
Narrative Design
Game Writing
Worldbuilding
Visual Direction
01 | Project Overview
Overview
The Connection is a branching science-fiction interactive fiction game developed for the course Creative Writing & Directing. The project began as a worldbuilding exercise inspired by Fredric Brown’s short story Answer and later evolved into an original Twine story set approximately one month after its events.
Design Challenge
How can a very short source story become the foundation for a larger fictional world, while allowing player choices to influence both what is discovered and how the story ultimately resolves?
Design Direction
I expanded a small detail from the original story—the different roles performed by its two central characters—into the biological and social structure of an entire species. The interactive narrative then uses exploration, dialogue choices, trust and accumulated knowledge to determine what the player understands and which outcomes become available.
02 | From Source Story to Worldbuilding
A | FROM A CHARACTER DETAIL TO A BIOLOGICAL RULE
The starting point was a detail in Brown’s story: its two central characters appear to perform different functions, with one directing and the other carrying out the physical work. I expanded this distinction into a speculative biological system in which human-like beings exist as pairs of bodies sharing one mind.
VIDYE
Planning · reasoning · information processing
KARYE
Execution · physical action · practical work
B | EXPANDING THE SYSTEM
SPECIALIZATIONS
Different pairs develop around fields such as information, energy, biotechnology and networking.
SAMMUH
Temporary collaborative structures bring otherwise autonomous pairs together around large-scale problems.
LUTETIA & THE HYPER-COMPUTER
The setting connects the biological premise to a larger technological and ideological conflict.
03 | Narrative Design
The narrative combines direct branching with persistent state tracking. Choices can immediately redirect a conversation, but they may also modify variables representing exploration, trust, cognitive configuration or relationships. Later passages evaluate these accumulated states to reveal information, alter responses and unlock different routes.
A | A CHOICE DEFINES HOW INFORMATION IS PROCESSED
Early in the story, the player chooses between two cognitive configurations. Cogito processes information more independently and analytically, while Sum emphasises shared processing and interpersonal understanding. The choice becomes part of the player state and is referenced by later dialogue.
C | ACCUMULATED BEHAVIOUR SHAPES THE ENDGAME
Near the ending, accumulated state becomes more important than a single final choice. Exploration, connection-focused behaviour and trust can change what the protagonist understands, which arguments become available and which resolutions can be reached.
04 |Visual Narrative Presentation
Although built in Twine, The Connection was designed to move beyond a purely text-on-page presentation. Character compositions, diagrams, computer interfaces and environmental scenes were used to give different narrative situations their own visual identity.
Character-focused scenes use visual-novel-style compositions to establish who is speaking and give dialogue a stronger sense of place.
Exposition is sometimes presented through interfaces and visual displays that belong to the fictional world rather than through prose alone.
Karvid sequences deliberately break from the laboratory presentation, visually separating uncertain or disruptive information from the institutional version of events.
