Remaking the Red Death: An Interactive Fiction Post-mortem
Proposal Type
Individual Talk
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
This individual talk provides a post-mortem discussion of an interactive fiction game the author created, ReMasque of the Red Death, for the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 5. The game is a web-based interactive fiction recreation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story “The Masque of the Red Death” built using ink and Inky, an interactive fiction scripting engine, with 2D art assets created in Sketchpad, a mobile-based digital drawing app. The game was produced entirely without the usage of AI tools. This talk will cover the initial ideation for the game, creating a basic prototype of the game’s core systems, presenting that prototype and receiving feedback from gothic horror and game scholars at a previous conference, and bringing in an artist to create art assets based on that feedback while also completing the game’s final design, programming, and narrative elements. The talk will also cover how the game was released on itch.io, a free online game storefront. The author will also show the work itself and some of the code and project files for the game during the talk and discuss plans for some future minor additions to the game.
The goal of this talk is to document an example of the making process for an interactive fiction project from ideation to prototyping to finished product without any assistance from AI tools. This talk will also discuss how this work builds on a tradition of adaptation within electronic literature, briefly touching on other works that use similar approaches, such as Galatea, Bronze, and 80 Days. Overall, this talk aims to provide conference attendees with a clear understanding of the workflow for creating and releasing a web-based interactive fiction game using ink and how that work fits into the wider genre of electronic literature.
Remaking the Red Death: An Interactive Fiction Post-mortem
Algorithms & Imaginaries
This individual talk provides a post-mortem discussion of an interactive fiction game the author created, ReMasque of the Red Death, for the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 5. The game is a web-based interactive fiction recreation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story “The Masque of the Red Death” built using ink and Inky, an interactive fiction scripting engine, with 2D art assets created in Sketchpad, a mobile-based digital drawing app. The game was produced entirely without the usage of AI tools. This talk will cover the initial ideation for the game, creating a basic prototype of the game’s core systems, presenting that prototype and receiving feedback from gothic horror and game scholars at a previous conference, and bringing in an artist to create art assets based on that feedback while also completing the game’s final design, programming, and narrative elements. The talk will also cover how the game was released on itch.io, a free online game storefront. The author will also show the work itself and some of the code and project files for the game during the talk and discuss plans for some future minor additions to the game.
The goal of this talk is to document an example of the making process for an interactive fiction project from ideation to prototyping to finished product without any assistance from AI tools. This talk will also discuss how this work builds on a tradition of adaptation within electronic literature, briefly touching on other works that use similar approaches, such as Galatea, Bronze, and 80 Days. Overall, this talk aims to provide conference attendees with a clear understanding of the workflow for creating and releasing a web-based interactive fiction game using ink and how that work fits into the wider genre of electronic literature.
Bio
Dr. Kenton Taylor Howard is a lecturer in the Games and Interactive Media program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. He has presented creative and scholarly work at the ELO conference several times in the past.