The Witching Hours

Do not read below unless you want spoilers on the various rooms and game play!

If you've completed the game, feel free to read below for my explanation of each room and the thought process behind much of the design and story. 

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Rooms Created: 

• Room 1:  Salem, Massachusetts - Establish location, alluding to historical events
• Room 2:  Town's Square & Mobs - Fortify location, portraying historical events
• Room 3: Church & Witch Trial -  Climax of arc, peak of the historical events
• Room 4:  Witch Hanging - Ramifications of climax, 
• Room 5: Governor & Wife -  Resolution & dissolution of the historical events

I utilized Scott McCloud's concepts of abstraction through the use of combining iconic abstraction with my bitsy art creations and my written dialog and interactions to help portray a fairly simple, interactive piece of history.  According to McCloud, "When pictures are more abstracted from "reality" they require greater levels of perception, more like words." Whereas, "When words are bolder, more direct, they require lower levels of perception and are received faster, more like pictures." (pg. 49)

McCloud's concept of transitions and time frame allowed me to create a sense of progression through the transitions from room to room. Because the last three rooms are all different colors, it's implied that this is a different location and a different time as you pass through each "room" and onto the next. Using McCloud's definition of transitions, I utilized scene-to-scene transitions "which transport us across significant distances of time and space" and subject-to-subject transitions, which has a "degree of reader involvement necessary to render these transitions meaningful." (pg. 71)

Embracing the simplicity of Bitsy and allowing the abstraction to be more limitless rather than a constraint in my story telling allowed for interesting designs/art as well as allowed me to tell an immersive, interactive story about a point in history which is extremely intriguing.