A few notes on my adaptation of Disch’s Amnesia script.

Lethe is an 'interactive fiction' game with an emphasis on the ‘fiction’ as opposed to the ‘game’. It focuses on narrative and presents the player with decisions of significance to plot and character, as opposed to geographic navigation and basic survival, like shelter and food. It is my ambition that the player will be able to traverse the majority of the narrative content of the script.

Disch’s Amnesia manuscript divides into a first section focused on narrative, followed by a ‘city grid’ section, implementation revisions, notes and finally what appears to be some code. The latter parts of the file are difficult or impossible to read due to poor quality scanning of the original paper documents.

The city grid content mostly entails navigating Manhattan. It contains some interesting descriptions of New York landmarks in 1986, but – in my view – is surplus to the story.  Aaron A Reed and previous commentators, remark on the tedium of navigating the city grid and dealing with basic survival in the 1986 Amnesia game.

Lethe focuses on the narrative part of the script, and almost completely ignores the remainder.    For those curious enough to consult the manuscript, the content used for Lethe ends on page 371, ’Transition to City Grid’.    I ignored the seventeen pages of city location descriptions ending on page 388, and all subsequent revisions and design notes produced during the development of the Electronic Arts Amnesia game, that run through to the end of the document on page 436.

As of Lethe 0.3, all of Disch’s writing from his initial script has been incorporated. I count 15 key decision points that lead to an ending of the game.    At this point the only way to experience all of these paths is to restart the game from the beginning when you reach an ending.   Next, I intend to investigate a how best to allow the player to resume play at the key decision that led to an ending.

https://volt5.itch.io/lethe