AUTOSAVE

The Witch's Way is configured to auto-magically track your progress and restore your position in the story to where you left off. If playing in a browser you can clear your cache/history to reset, or in any mode you can restart the story by clicking here. (WARNING: This will reset the story at the beginning!)

Note that on some versions of iOS you may need to turn 'Prevent Cross-site tracking' off in 'Settings' under 'Safari' for Autosave to work, and that it may still time out if you don't interact with the game for 7 straight days. This is a function of how iOS views website tracking and is intended as a security feature. This is currently a non-issue on desktop applications.

FULLSCREEN KIOSK

The Witch's Way can be run in either an application mode or a browser mode (i.e. an HTML5 game mode). In an application mode, the platform specific 'command key' + F will toggle between windowed and fullscreen. (CMD + F on MacOS and CTRL + F on Windows). When running in a browser, there are often browser hotkeys which will accomplish the same, or you can clikc on the 'Witch's Way' logo in the top left to toggle as well. This setting is meaningless on mobile.

The Witch's Way

Chapter 1, Spring 2021

Doris C. Rusch

Lead Writer, Narrative Development, Twine Authoring & Development

Andrew M. Phelps

Lead Artist, Illustration, Technology Development & Applicaiton Support

transformative play logo

The Witch's Way is was developed in collaboration with the Transformative Play Initiative at the Games & Society Laboratory at Uppsala University.

The Witch's Way was produced in residence at three sites simultaneously during 2019-2021: The Department of Game Design at Uppsala University in Gotland, Sweden, the Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand (HITLabNZ) in the College of Engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and at the American University Game Center at American University in Washington, D.C., USA. The AU Game Center is a multi-disciplinary center supported by both the AU School of Communication and the AU College of Arts & Sciences. Each of the authors teaches game design and development at these institutions, and we are grateful for our incredible stuents and colleagues in the development of this work. We are also thankful for the support of our continued artistic and creative activities by these institutions and their associated programs and laboratories.

The Witch's Way is an interactive story adventure that in addition to standing on its own as a game experience also seeks to illustrate design principles with respect to designing games for transformative play. The authors have collaborated over the past several years in the creation of a design framework, and a brief bibliography of work in this area is listed below. It is our hope that this game helps serve as an example of the design model as developed thus far...

Phelps, Andrew, and Doris C. Rusch. (2020) “Navigating Existential, Transformative Game Design.” In Proceedings from DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere: 1-4. http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/DiGRA_2020_paper_21.pdf

Rusch, Doris C and Andrew M. Phelps (2020) Existential Transformational Game Design: Harnessing the “Psychomagic” of Symbolic Enactment. Frontiers in Psychology. 11:571522. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.571522

Rusch, Doris, and Andrew Phelps. (2020) “Games of the Soul.” Paper and Keynote Lecture presented at FROG: Future and Reality of Gaming 2020, Vienna, Austria. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UZOaK1kN5k (Paper in press, 2021).

Rusch, Doris. (2020) Existential, Transformative Game Design. Journal of Games, Self & Society>, 2(1), 1-39.

Phelps, A., Wagner, J. and Moger, A. (2020) Experiential Depression and Anxiety Through Proceduralized Play: A Case Study of Fragile Equilibrium. Journal of Games, Self, and Society>, 2(1) 104-149. https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/12215417

Doris Rusch. (2018) “21st Century Soul Guides – Leveraging Myth and Ritual for Game Design”, DiGRA Nordic Subversion, Transgression, and Controversy in Play, University of Bergen, Norway.

The Witch's Way is copyright 2020-2021 Doris C Rusch and Andrew M Phelps, all rights reserved. The associated code and materials are provided here as open-source materials for learning and educational purposes.