A Hypertext Night is an experimental game that's inspired by David T. Marchand's wonderful Twine: When Acting as a Wave. It's also inspired by my own aimless wanderings around the house late at night when I couldn't sleep. And of course there's that fascination of mine with horror and humour and the strangeness of perception.
Why do we fear? Why do we laugh? I suppose they are products of imagination. Without the ability to imagine, we can't guess at possible futures and be fearful of what may come. Without imagination, we can't reframe disturbing situations and release our tension in sudden laughter.
A Hypertext Night is essentially an exercise in imagination.
And not just any sort of imagination, but specifically the narrative aspect of it. Because we can't help telling stories to ourselves. It is such a hardwired instinct that every explanation we have ever come up with, is in fact a story. Why did Ah Beng marry Ah Huay? Why did Ali lose the game? Why are you reading this?
There's just something about our mind that loves to fill in blanks with imaginary illusion. Our mind loves to weave loosely connected threads into a strange fabric of coherence. For if you really examine A Hypertext Night, it's just a bunch of discrete words and phrases. And through the act of clicking, a sequence is formed, and a possible story is perceived. Why?
Okay, okay, enough of this intellectual blah blah bullshit. It's experiential time. A time for you to sleep, now. For things are awaiting... in [A Hypertext Night].