blueful

blueful is a work of interactive fiction made as a prelude to Blue Lacuna. The story is told to snippets that take the player on a journey through a large amount of websites such as YouTube, Google Maps, LiveJournal, Last.FM, Craigslist, Cafepress, Flickr, Twitter, Mailinator and many more. For each page, the parts of the story have been integrated into the layout. As such, the story is told to video fragments, audio, regular writing, comments, using the options for publishing text made available on the site it is on. When available, players are sometimes able to leave behind comments.

At the end of each part, there is a link to the next page along with a keyword to enter from the main page in case one of the pages is edited or removed. As a form of modern day graffiti, social networks are sprayed with these fragments, that come together in a coherent story. At the end of the journey, the player is offered a choice and is pointed towards the game it is a prelude for. Players can leave behind their address to receive a real postcard with the ending to the story, and are encouraged to donate.

The interactive game elements are found in navigating the different websites, locating the fragments of texts and sometimes solving very minor puzzles (e.g. figuring out the correct date on a calendar) to continue playing. At the end of the game, two possible outcomes are offered.