The Sartrean Knight
published
overview
An Academy challenge about interactive storytelling gave me a week to try something literary. I wanted to take an idea from Sartre’s writing about freedom and bad faith and make the reader answer for it. That became The Sartrean Knight, a short story told through choices.
A tired knight falls asleep in a field and dreams of a hooded figure at a gate. The figure asks who he is. Calling himself a warrior leads somewhere different from calling himself a thinker, and refusing an answer has consequences too. I wanted the choices to express a position the reader could recognize in themselves.
The branches lead to six endings. Keeping the story short meant a person could reach an ending in a few minutes and return to see what another answer changes. The writing and the paths through it had to be worked out together.
I kept the narrative in one JSON file, with the text and choices attached to each node. English and Portuguese sat side by side in that file, switched from the main menu. It worked for this small story, but keeping two versions together by hand is what sent me to learn string catalogs properly.
I handled the writing, interface and implementation, then published the app.
design
Paper textures and thin, square outlines carry through to the choices. The buttons belong to the page around them, with enough separation to make the available answers clear. The illustrations and book-like frames establish the mood before the next passage is read.
All six endings return to the same image of the field. The knight wakes in the same place whatever he has said. I wanted the meaning to come from the answer and its consequences; the final picture leaves that interpretation with the reader.
The visual direction comes from medieval manuscripts, and MedievalSharp carries the narration.
Jacquard 24 distinguishes the gatekeeper’s voice, making the speaker recognizable inside the story without adding a separate label to every line.
