howling dogs is a text-based interactive narrative created in Twine. The reader navigates the story through hyperlinked keywords written into the prose itself; this navigation then provides either supplementary information, choices and actions for the reader to take, or directly progresses the story. This white-on-black text makes up almost the entirety of the prose and experience. The narrative follows a single character isolated in a living quarter that holds necessities like food and water dispensers, a toilet and shower, garbage disposal, and a sanity room. By eating, drinking, and taking care of yourself, the player character may enter the activity room. Within is a Virtual Reality visor that transports the reader and character into an assortment of dreamlike, often violent simulations.
The simulations within the activity room are where the meat of the narrative takes place. Each of them is varied in tone, setting, and writing styles. They are precluded by a digital pixel frame that represent the only color in the narrative. Through its runtime howling dogs explores isolation and the degradation of human hygiene and sanity as the desire for escapism grows in an unstimulating and unchanging world. Both the character and player seek out these varied and new experiences within the activity room, to the unavoidable detriment of their real-world counterpart- mirroring the very real dangers of trying to escape the real world into a digital one.
The scenario crafted within this narrative will likely see its relevance only continue to grow as years go by and the digital blackout curtains one can surround themselves in evolve to be denser and more all-encompassing. A core message warning against losing oneself in digital worlds appears to be reactionary to some extent, potentially in response to this technological march. Each time the player character reawakens and goes through the mechanical (human) motions of the day more is brushed aside and system processes deemed extraneous are shut down permanently. Showering becomes unnecessary- cleaning the mountains of garbage that make the floor sticky and poke your feet with broken glass is an expendable afterthought. There is no doubt that if the game did not force upon the player and the character themselves the need to eat and drink every day before entering the simulation both would forgo this mortal necessity as well.
With the same stroke of experiential yearning that pushes a player to seek the new novel experience and generate detached disinterest in the dull metal room of the “real” world, the protagonist of the story loses all connection to their physical form and dives only deeper into the simulated worlds within the activity room’s confines. In this way, howling dogs necessitates empathy and self-insertion, where the reader becomes much more of a participant than an audience in the twisted, dreamlike, often-violent scenarios presented. The reader becomes instead the consumer, killing the character within the narrative slowly with a shared yearning that reinforces the self-destructive habits of a person who wants more but cannot overcome the circumstances they reside within.
