We released Walden, a game for the PlayStation 4 last Tuesday – it’s been quite a journey.  A full telling of my own experience being the lead programmer on the project will have to wait, but it’s been an incredible path.  I will say I that I found the work a historical adaptation as much as a literary one – one thing the game offers is the chance to add context to the book.  People who have (or haven’t) read the book may not realize that Thoreau’s experience was not in a distant wilderness, or that he met and corresponded with other people famous in their own right such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott or Horace Greeley, or that a convergence of family tragedies may have been a key force behind his experiment to begin with.

I find literature hard to understand with history surrounding it – This project is meant to support understanding of Thoreau’s book, and perhaps lead someone into thoughts and inquiry they might not have found otherwise.  That goes for both first time readers and those already familiar with the work.

For the game itself – I’ve seen many people play the game in many different ways:  Do you want to search for every plant and animal?  Find each arrowhead, encapsulating a moment from the book?  Do you want to pay your taxes and family debts?  Try to get your work published?  One key strategy is to realize that you cannot do everything – you simply don’t have the time.  While the game has survival elements, and money-making elements, and jobs for different people, you can balance things so that none of these elements dominate your time, if you do not wish it.  Many of the mechanics are a feint to trick the player, but which specific ones are “wrong path” depends on which player you ask.

This dynamic leads to my own answer to the common question of : Why make Walden a game?

A game is about the choices you make, and Thoreau’s Walden, at its core, is about examining the choices you make.