Queers in Love at the End of the World by Anna Anthropy is an extremely simple, 10 second long, interactive fiction game built in Twine. Despite its simplicity, the game is surprisingly effective at both evoking emotion and conveying a message and also keeping the player engaged and continuing to play over and over.
In my first playthrough of the game, I think I felt very torn between clicking through options quickly so that I could see where each path took me and wanting to take my time to actually read the story. The problem is, the 10 second timer in the game prevents you from doing both. I think this was a very effective tactic by Anthropy because it simulates the urgency and the panic that these characters would feel with the world ending around them. Although this timer can be frustrating because it prevents you from thoroughly reading the dialogue and exploring all of the options, I think without it, the game would not have the same feel. The interactions between the characters would be loving and beautiful, but they would not have the same emotional weight.
It simulates this idea that you only have so much, there are only so many things you can say or do. It forces you to decide what is important. You can try to take as many actions, say as much as you can before time runs out. In this way, you prioritize the perceived experience of these characters that don’t actually exist. Alternatively, you could prioritize your own experience of the game and click through the options slower—slow enough that you can actually read the story. I feel that this does a good job of simulating the exact dilemma the characters themselves are facing: Do you try to get everything off your chest and tell your partner everything that is on your mind? Or do you just be with them and savor your last moments as human bodies on this Earth? Or do you somehow try to squeeze in both?
And then your 10 seconds are up, and “Everything is wiped away.” It’s an incredibly solemn and simple ending to the game. For me, those words bring a sense of calm, bittersweet relief. It’s not pure sadness that this game leaves you with. It may be the end of the world, but more than anything, we see expressions of queer love and joy–two queers finding comfort in each other. It’s sad, but it’s not without hope or comfort, and I think it’s really quite impressive that Anthropy was able to convey this with such a short game.
But then you look further down the page, and you see the options “Afterword” and “Restart,” indicating that though your playthrough of the game is over, your experience of it is not necessarily over as well. And so, that “Restart” button beckons to you. Though those ten seconds are all the characters had with each other, you, the player, have much more than ten seconds with the characters. For such a short game, I think it would actually take a really long time to fully explore every possible option since there are just so many. But I also think that’s kind of part of the appeal of this game—the fact that there seems to be almost never-ending options to explore. Even though your choices really have no impact on the outcome of the game, there is a comfort and beauty in getting to experience (virtually) all of these different expressions of queer love.
I think as a queer myself, this game interests me just based on the premise: queers in love. Even though this event the characters are experiencing is tragic, there’s a strange beauty and joy in seeing the expression of queer love. And I think it is this desire for queer representation, in large part, that kept me coming back for more with this game.
