Blueful

By: Xander

On: February 26th, 2009

Blueful is a short story by Aaron.A.Reed, designed to act as a prelude for his IF adventure Blue Lacuna. The interesting quirk of Blueful is that it takes place over a number of different websites which you navigate through your browser. It adds a certain amount of reality to the story, though sadly it does degrade the experience when a couple of the links refuse to work anymore (though a clever ‘word’ system is in place so you can skip broken chapters and carry on to the next link), however the sheer inventiveness of it all makes it worth the trouble. The ending especially sounds interesting, but whether I can even get it remains to be seen. I’m afraid closure is something you’ll have to wait for.

I’d suggest ignoring a lot of the ‘reaction’ comments on both websites if that kind of ‘This will change my life. Honestly, Thank you!’ testimonial grinds you the wrong way, but truthfully its a tough story to not enjoy given the clear amount of effort that was put into it. It’s very well thought out, and if it was partly designed to get me interested in the more complex follow-up Blue Lacuna I’d have to say its worked on me. Look forward to a review soon!

(Thanks to Fuzz in the forums!)

Posted in Abstract, Adventure, Interactive Fiction

Sam

I was pretty disappointed in blueful. Instead of using each online site to best effect (having a character’s “appointments” in google calendar, or their “actual” pictures on flickr), it just uses each site as a way to display text.
I was expecting more of a digital footprint of a character, like an epistolary novel. The actual prose didn’t thrill me either, to be honest, but I have liked what little I’ve done with Blue Lacuna.
Xander

Yeah, some of it is quite interesting, like the cafepress thing, but truthfully it plays out more like a esoterically formed prose rather than an ARG. The Youtube section would’ve worked better had the video actually meant anything rather than just being a ‘You’ve been Framed’ style thing.
sinoth

I think it’s interesting to use each site in a way it wasn’t intended. Sam, what you mention would make an enthralling journey, but it would be fundamentally different from this one. With blueful I had the feeling of looking at a picture inside a picture… trying to find a cohesive story in many jumbled dissimilar parts.

I liked it a lot, mainly because I’ve never seen something like this done. I think it would lose it’s charm if I were to see something else in this style, though.
http://0xdeadc0de.org/ Eclipse

sorry but i have to link that:
bancomicsans.com
judgespear

This is not a game. It’s a cool concept, a nice use of websites to create a narrative, but I fail to see how this qualifies as a game.
Samoy

I believe the ending is properly done and interesting too.

Think about it, all tis time you’ve followed obvious links down a one way street, led by the hand. When you are finally given a choice of your route though you cannot choose either.

Quite poetic.
Xander

@judgespear: Agreed. It is not a game. I don’t think anyone called it one though so.. that seems slightly unnecessary.

No less true however.
Sciere

If anyone’s wondering, the postcards are indeed sent out, even to Europe. It’s a wonderful idea, especially, as sinoth said, *to find a cohesive story in many jumbled dissimilar parts*, and definitely worth a small PayPal tip
Jad

“Blueful is a short story by Aaron.A.Reed, designed to act as a prelude for his IF adventure Blue Lacuna.”

“is a short story”

short story =/= game

ta-daah!
XenOtai

In Memoriam rip-off.
Toky

Blueful… I was so pumped for indie PSO goodness.
falsion

Maybe I’m just daft, but I couldn’t make sense of any of this.

I kept reading through this, going from each site to the next, and it doesn’t seem very coherent nor does it even make any sense to me. Not only that, it just all feels disjointed.

Using multiple sites to tell a story is a cool idea. But each site is just used as a fancy way to display text. And the text doesn’t even flow together well, it’s like a very long winded haiku. And the sites are only used just to display bits and pieces of it.

I think it would have been better if the story were done more in a way where you have to piece together clues and what happened.

Like, have a website that looks like a news site, with a news story showing an event that occurred. Then the next page could be someone (or multiple people) on a newsgroup or forum talking about this event and what they know about it, all from their own points of view. And from there, things could keep building up, and then eventually from reading about this “story” from multiple sites, and from several sources, you begin to get a picture of what really was going on.

I think if it were done like that, it would be awesome. But instead, it’s just a long stream of text that could easily just have worked just as well on one page. Using multiple pages to display it doesn’t really do much for it, at least in my opinion anyway.
Fuzz

I chose to go, and got my postcard about a week later. I showed it to my friend and he chose to stay, so I’ll find out the other ending soon.
JW

comic sans.
ElTipejoLoco

I wonder how much I missed in the Cloud of Heat and the Shrinkster.com sites.

But yeah, it’s mostly a story, but then again, it’s a prelude to a game.

I find ReadMe’s and Manuals and Feelies and whatnot can be as much a part of a game if you want it to be. And nobody is forcing any of these on you. If that were the case, then I could see people complaining.

But since it’s not, it seems rather silly to complain.
Broman

It’s a short story, and the creator of this project decided to set out each section the way he did. Sure, it may not be your idea of a perfect layout, and sure, your ideas for what it “should” have been sound fine, but half of you seem to be saying that what Aaron has done is *incorrect in itself*.
This is not the case at all.

Anyway, I for one enjoyed it as an extremely initiative medium for not just a short story, but a true work of art.
Fuzz

@ Broman: Thank you. People need to accept this for what it is. They don’t need to like it, but they can at least accept it and its layout.
falsion

I liked the idea. I just thought the execution could have been better.

It’s not so much the layout, but more so the fact that every sentence was a sentence fragment. Both of which made it kind of disjointed and hard to follow.

I think I would have been able to enjoy it more if it all flowed together more coherently. But I still don’t quite understand what I read and it didn’t make much sense to me.
Flamebait

The format and layout didn’t bother me, but the actual story was far too uninteresting for me to read in its entirety.

Blue Lacuna sounds worth playing though.
stezton

I got to the part on Ning.com and just lost interest. It’s kind of pointless.
Fuzz

Does it need to have a point?
Pnx

It’s been a while since I’ve played the game or read the story, but I always though that the disjointed story spread out across dozens of worlds was kind of the point.
http://rmvx.gameclover.com RMVX

@Eclipse: I can’t believe there’s a site about banning comic sans. Hilarious :)