Interactivity in 18 Cadence

18 Cadence evoked an emotional response from me while playing. The exploration of the house and its inhabitants over 100 years reflects my own obsession with my childhood home. I have always wished to know the story of all past inhabitants, to understand where certain marks may have come from. 18 Cadence has allowed me to experience this exploration of a houses history.

Through the use of linear networks in multiple ways enhanced the playing experience. By allowing me to explore the history through the entire houses linear timeline, or to follow one room, or even to experience individuals experience of living in the home there was a new narrative created every time I played. Though there is a set narrative the player is encouraged to create their own, personalised story through extracting points of interest to them from the original text. Personally, I tend to enjoy literature which has a clear path to take, leading to one conclusion from one narrative which is readable in only one way. However, 18 Cadence forced me to explore a text with more freedom while still having a clear beginning and end. I could make my own, mini narrative each time I played while still adhering to the original story. This interactivity usually frustrates me as I usually find more enjoyment from experiencing a narrative the same way each time I read it. I like consistency. In this case however, I managed to find a happy medium in which there was a consistent story and it was simply the order that I read it that changed. In fact, I found the options strangely liberating. In a way, I was part author of a narrative in which the overall story was already decided. The option to extract points of interest from the main text to arrange and document in my own way meant that the excess of information given was more manageable. Despite the interactivity of the text I found myself merely going through the motions a few times. I simply clicked the arrow, read the next piece of text and repeated. At times, I was more interested in having opened all the possible nodes that I didn’t truly engage in the text.

Interestingly, I did find that when I attempted to save the webpage as a PDF to my personal computer it revealed information that I had not seen prior. A construction permit is part of this information, this permit is giving permission for the original construction of the house at 18 Cadence Street. Once I had seen this permit on the download I became obsessed with finding it in the game, looking for the true beginning of the text despite the fact that when the game is first opened there is the option to ‘Begin at the beginning’ or ‘Begin at the end’ it does not start with this construction permit. I eventually found this permit in the game, though it only served to further my annoyance at the lack of one, truly linear narrative.