Early Death: Best summarized with the meaning of the shortage WTF?
Andrč Thu Dec 26 14:40:29 2013
No I won??? Won what about what, or within what kind of a story? Seems more a psycho-test gone awry than a FF!
G Sun May 4 13:28:56 2014
Mysterious... interesting? Unusual.
Tammy Wed May 28 05:33:21 2014
What? I'm confused! why did it end like that?
margaret Tue Sep 2 08:47:43 2014
i find it was very entresting and italic to read
Clive55 Tue Sep 2 21:42:00 2014
I remember it being a fascinating mix of gameplay and exploring one's psyche when I played it a few years ago. I don't know if I tipped my hat to the author then for writing it.. but I'm doing so now.
Babap Sat Oct 4 11:00:58 2014
Completed.
But I really really struggle to understand the point of the story. I can get that it is some sort of metaphor. But the man and you know all those stuff.... it is meant to be the freedom of your mind or something?
Clive55 Tue Oct 14 04:19:22 2014
Babap.. I think what made this story a winner was the fact that it was a kind of departure from the kind of prose most of us are used to. Now, that's not to say we'd want that in every story we set out to solve.. lol... no. But it was refreshing nonetheless, and added a little twist to the overall genre. Never a bad thing, in my estimation.
Matthew Sun Nov 9 23:49:51 2014
amazing
Great! Thu Dec 18 22:54:55 2014
I played it, and thought it was amazing and very thoughtful. The only problem was that I couldn't work out how to finish it.
michael Wed Dec 23 12:12:09 2015
great story, best I've seen so far
michael Wed Dec 23 12:22:50 2015
the story was the best so far but i think the story is of this guy dreaming
michael Wed Dec 23 12:24:20 2015
it took me one hour but it was worth it
ZeeeZU Tue Mar 15 05:39:46 2016
After soooooooo many times I finally cracked it. But honestly, I really STRUGGLE to understand the meaning behind. Anybody mind explaining?
Yaz Fri Jun 3 20:57:04 2016
Creepy one... ;)
Jack Sun Aug 21 13:08:11 2016
Mulholland Drive is made by David Lynch, checked this form wikipedia, but in the game show was the wrong answer. wtf?
Mulholland Drive, yes.
Rai Fri Jan 27 23:56:20 2017
So I just completed it, multiple times actually, and found it very original and intriguing. However, there is one thing I disliked about the "true" ending:
SPOILER
Why do you have to kill the "beast"? It seemed to me like it was, at best, a sick animal fleeing from a bloodthirsty hunter. There are certain values and actions that the book seems to affirm, but this part seems to go against all that, and seems like much worse of a choice than killing the metal-armed soldier in the red passage. I understand that it might represent past regrets and such, which you have to leave behind, but even then, finishing what the highly unsympathetic Richard has started by shooting the beast in the head and gloating at its death with disgust seems much more like repressing it, whereas looking it in the eyes and befriending it seems more like accepting your past, which is closer to the "positive thinking" the ending mentions.
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I might be looking at it the wrong way, but with a book themed around psychology I can't help nitpicking over its symbolism.
Other than that I really enjoyed this book, and will definitely recommend it to others as well.
Robert Kingett Sat Mar 11 15:05:57 2017
If anyone can provide me with any tips that would be good! Here is what I did.
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In the red light, I saw the thing in armor but did not pick up the gun. I ran back to the red light. in the green light, I killed the beat after it ripped off the guys arm, in the pink light, I said that having childeren is the answer, in the yellow, after winning, I took the mystery prize.
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bluejuice915 Tue Apr 4 14:39:01 2017
This book is weird. Having played several times and not found the "winning" ending, I'm moving on to other games. I'll return later to try again. All-decision games are usually OK, but with little plot and clarity on what is correct, it becomes annoying. The writing is good, with clever mini-stories. But this is too tough. More plot or clues towards the correct solution would help. Grade: 90
Raymond Thu Sep 14 08:45:31 2017
Hmm. An interesting experience. Kinda cool with the different lights as different trials, or at least I assume that is how they work. Not sure if I got to the best ending or not, seemed to a good ending, just not sure if it is the best. Will be interesting to see the other comments.
Phil Fri Oct 20 19:19:56 2017
Great, really imaginative
Jixie Dye Tue Nov 7 02:06:43 2017
It was all very confusing. Never found out what was going on with the strange beast, have no idea what all that was about at the end. Very confusing indeed.
Robert Kingett Thu Nov 9 21:21:07 2017
I can't seem to get the right ending. Here is what I have done so far...
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In the red light, I take the fallen gun and try shooting the beast. In the green light, I take the gun from one of the fallen twins and kill the beast. In the yellow light, I take the car after having won the game. In the pink light, I tell the couple that having kids is a great idea and the woman pays me. what am I missing?
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what am I missing?
RogueOne Wed Nov 29 19:16:11 2017
Done!
ki Tue Feb 6 13:12:23 2018
it was good
ChillWithMill Tue Mar 20 20:45:22 2018
Had fun
ur mom Wed Aug 1 13:44:24 2018
Finished!
paul Sat Mar 16 17:22:28 2019
what a loser! but what is going on here?!
mcg Wed Nov 20 21:01:35 2019
Don't know what to think 'bout that one... Sort of a psychological/stubbornness game/test?
Mage Mon Oct 18 01:26:47 2021
I still wish there's some kind of in-depth psychological analysis for this on the paths you choose. Interesting content, but it's hard to feel good about "winning" when one doesn't really understand why or how.
ffproject Mon Apr 25 19:54:19 2022
I've used NeuralBlender.com which apparently "uses state-of-the-art AI technology to generate images from text input" to come up with some pictures for Waiting For The Light.
Sean Sun Nov 13 03:33:21 2022
Played this again after what must be a decade. Good stuff and thanks for adding the pictures!
Harry Paratestes Tue Mar 14 20:24:23 2023
What on Earth was all that about??
YARD Sun Aug 20 13:31:37 2023
An interesting experiment, and I do not regret the experience, although I think it's a bit too "in your face" about its psychoanalytical nature. A larger work with more "layers of obfuscation" would probably be more impactful altogether. (Though I see some commenters were impressed as it was, but at least as many were just confused.)
I.e. most Silent Hill games since the second one have been about the protagonist's psyche, which was approached with varying levels of skill by different studios. When I just started, I thought it would present itself as more clearly recognizable horror throughout, like Silent Hill 2 itself. Instead, it's more like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories with how apparent it is about its ultimate purpose. If my point is not yet clear: Silent Hill 2 remains considered a classic, and a remake would have never been announced if there wasn't a lot of demand for it. Shattered Memories had a reasonably positive reception and you can still find its fans out there, yet it's largely forgotten by now.
Granted, I'll admit that I still had to resort to reading the comments here to win. Mostly because
SPOILER
I didn't realize that you had to flee from the fighting immediately, even though in hindsight, it's obvious that there is the same theme of resisting peer pressure as in the game show, and that the whole battle with "Wolfenstein supersoldier" is effectively a parody of such power fantasies.
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It's also interesting that this is apparently the first, and so far only, work on here to be almost entirely illustrated, thanks to AI image generation? (Almost - some "interstitial" game show and forest refs are still "bare".) I wonder if any others on here are slated for such treatment, or if the "dreamy" nature of this one would make it a one-off? In either case, I think the pictures might already influence narrative judgement.
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Someone commented that they didn't understand why shooting, rather than sparing, the beast in the forest was the right choice. With that image, it's rather hard to understand Bianca's logic.
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I think the only typo I saw was
6 "You answer before your opponents has a chance"
Lastly; I keep suggesting the addition of filters to the main page/sidebar, but I think being able to sort by the number of refs would be an excellent feature for when one is set on whether they want a short experiment like this, a somewhat longer trial, a standard-length adventure or a sweeping epic. It's not exactly easy to glimpse that information from the titles alone. In addition to sorting by author and by the number of comments, I think it could really be one of those changes helping to breathe more life into this hidden gem of the internet.
If I can get a better grip on AI image generation there could be some more extensive use of it here, as it stands it only really makes sense for the less 'real' scenarios. I've also put some in Escape The Asylum, for example.
There's a limited amount of filtering, realistically I'm not going to add any more.
If you click on a year, for example http://www.ffproject.com/year2014.htm, that year's gamebooks are shown (the year the online version was added, not when they were written).
YARD Mon Aug 21 09:36:52 2023
To ffproject: I see. Perhaps it would be a good idea to place a version of this answer in the FAQ?
I should also say that unless you explicitly decide to hover the author's name, there's really no way to tell that it is clickable - after all, it's written exactly the same as the rest of the heading, with the same font, same colour and no underline/italics/etc.
MPerera Sun Sep 3 06:29:12 2023
Finally won this!
SPOILER
Not easy. Needed to go through the downloadable version to figure out that I had to retreat immediately and kill the beast. The most annoying part was counseling the couple.
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Kieran Fri Sep 8 22:41:18 2023
My inspiration for writing this was I was watching the movie Inland Empire and thinking 'I'm enjoying this without having the faintest clue what's going on' and figured I'd write a gamebook in this manner. My idea was that people could make their own interpretations of what it was all about even though I had a clear idea in my own head what it was about. But to be honest, I'm probably kidding myself that people thought it worth thinking about that deeply and it's more a case that people are just mystified why they have to take certain actions
SPOILER
like killing the poor beast
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in order to win. While I left a couple of clues in the quiz show segment, they're probably too obtuse to be helpful.
For anyone who's curious about what it actually is all about:
SPOILER
The gamebook takes place inside the head of a patient committed to a mental health facility due to emotional instability. The four scenarios are based on Robert Plutchik's emotional wheel of 4 pairs of opposite emotions ie joy or sadness; acceptance or disgust; fear or anger; and surprise or anticipation. In each scenario the reader must make a decision that assigns one of these simpler emotions (flee from the super soldier = fear while fighting him = rage; repair the couple's relationship = joy while failing = sadness; spare the beast = acceptance while killing it = disgust; failing at the quiz or taking the mystery prize = surprise while taking the jackpot = anticipation. Plutchik argued that these simpler emotions combined to make more complex ones - so acceptance + joy = love; joy + anticipation = optimism; anticipation + rage = aggressiveness; rage + disgust = contempt; disgust + sadness = remorse; sadness + surprise = disapproval; surprise + fear = awe; fear + acceptance = submission. The goal is to gather the 4 basic emotions so the only complex emotion formed is optimism as that is the only one that's healthy for the patient in their current situation. To do that you need to gather fear, joy, anticipation and disgust (which is why you have to kill the poor beast).
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YARD Sat Sep 9 08:04:12 2023
Yeah, I read the comments after getting stumped on the military part, so I found someone laying out
SPOILER
Plutchik's Wheel and its relevance to the proceedings in a comment written years ago. The issue is that I think the concept is probably obscure for a reason, and the scenarios are not only too short to develop sufficient investment into them, but some of them can also be seen plausibly related to multiple emotions. I.e. running away from the beast gets you consumed by darkness, so it's unclear why running away would be the right thing for the "Wolfenstein" episode. As in, why is the fear of the beast less valid than the fear of supersoldiers?
For that matter, you can easily argue that abandoning a whole squad and whatever they were defending would evoke far more disgust than shooting a beast who did, after all, just tore off someone's arm, with his sister's (and unintentional accomplice in his likely death) cries still ringing in your ears. This is why I remain surprised more people apparently failed the beast part than the military one.