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Aug. 14th, 2024 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretBenjamin Rosenbaum's The Ghost and the Golem is a newly released interactive novel/game set in the same setting as his tabletop rpg A Dream Apart, a fantasy shtetl game that I deeply love. The Ghost and the Golem is available here: https://www.choiceofgames.com/ghost-and-the-golem/ and I've already completed two playthroughs, ans I expect to go back, because there are so many possibilities I want to explore.
The story is of course extraordinarily well crafted. A sequence or two made me cry from pure, perfectly timed catharsis. But what I found most interesting about the experience of engaging with the game was the way it seemed to force you to grapple with, or maybe even define, the metaphysical logic of the story. Is this a rationalist tale of encroaching modernity, or a fantasy adventure, or a pietistic allegory? When you choose to pray to God in the story, does God listen or does the choice simply affect who you are as a character? Rosenbaum's fiction has often been about these ambiguous borderlines, so giving the reader a choice about how to negotiate the boundaries is such a sharp way to experience his project as a writer.
The story is of course extraordinarily well crafted. A sequence or two made me cry from pure, perfectly timed catharsis. But what I found most interesting about the experience of engaging with the game was the way it seemed to force you to grapple with, or maybe even define, the metaphysical logic of the story. Is this a rationalist tale of encroaching modernity, or a fantasy adventure, or a pietistic allegory? When you choose to pray to God in the story, does God listen or does the choice simply affect who you are as a character? Rosenbaum's fiction has often been about these ambiguous borderlines, so giving the reader a choice about how to negotiate the boundaries is such a sharp way to experience his project as a writer.