Exploration of the unique confluence of literary and programming elements, exemplified by "In nihilum reverteris," a collaborative creation by Yerzmyey and Hellboj. This work transcends conventional digital genres—blending aspects of electronic literature, computer games, and demoscene creations—to produce a hybrid form that immerses the viewer in a world where familiar reality is annihilated. The paper examines how such digital works use complex interplays of narrative and code to foster new forms of creative expression. It argues that these hybrid forms, despite their rootedness in distinct aesthetic and technical traditions, offer a new immersive potential that challenges the boundaries of genre purity. This study asserts that the piece's placement within demoscene and gaming communities, rather than purely literary circles, highlights the inter-genre dialogue that is crucial for understanding and advancing digital artistic expressions.

• Human-centered computing → Text input;

Interactive fiction, Electronic literature, Computer game, Paragraph text game, Demoscene, Hypertext novel, Immersivity, Hybridity, UBU Lab, Genre boundaries

ACM Reference Format: Krzysztof A. Ziembik. 2024. Interactive fiction using demoscene and computer game aesthetics to portray a catastrophic vision of the world. In 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT '24), September 10--13, 2024, Poznan, Poland. ACM, New York, NY, USA 4 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3648188.3680248

Digital culture has a wide variety of forms of expression, including some that are based simultaneously on literary components and programming. This could be a computer game, a hypertext novel, interactive fiction, a demoscene piece, or generative art. Despite their different aesthetics and realization strategies, they could be processed creatively due to the complex relationships of their elements. Katherine Hayles even argues that this crossing of boundaries and patterns is a natural and inevitable phenomenon: "The shuffling of code and language, which fosters the element of recombination, should be situated within a more general practice in which human thought processes and the computer's ability to execute commands work together to create a literary work of which they, as cognitive processes, become the subject."[5] In nihilum reverteris is an example of a work that violates the boundaries of digital genres, seemingly permanently established, to achieve such a new immersive effect. It uses means of expression characteristic of electronic literature, a computer game, and a demoscene piece to immerse the viewer of the work into a world of destruction of the familiar reality. This hybridity would please Loss Pequeño Glazier, who sees electronic literature as a continuation of experimental print literature[4]. While catastrophic visions of the fate of people or the world, characterized by the dramatic course of global events with grave consequences for humanity, are a popular leitmotif in literature, as well as in computer games, films, or even musical works, digital hybrid works, combining features of different genres of digital expression, whose focus and use was such catastrophic themes, have not been created so far. There is a certain immersive potential in hybrid works, the ability to draw the viewer into a story that cannot be told in such a way by works from other art fields.

In January 2018, a digital work by independent artists, Yerzmyey from Poland (author of the text) and Hellboj from the Czech Republic (author of the program), created at the UBU Lab in Krakow, Jagiellonian University, within the framework of the project "Creative Programming - Laboratory" financed by the program of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education "National Programme for the Development of Humanities" for the years 2016–19 (0020/NPRH4/H2b/83/2016), entitled In nihilum reverteris, appeared in the public space 1. The work was written on the programming side in a low-level language, assembler for the Z80 eight-bit processor, and on the story side, in Polish. According to the authors 2, a computer "role-playing text game" was created, emulating the style of computer text games of the 1980s, thematically being science fiction. The work was first developed for the ZX Spectrum, a computer platform produced between 1982 and 1987, and subsequent versions for other platforms in other programming languages were created through collaboration with other artists and programmers. Distribution took place on the internet, in completely digital form, and the work's files were made available free of charge.

In the storyline, the reader is introduced to the adventures of a man who experiences the disappearance of objects from his everyday surroundings. These are not "ordinary" disappearances, because from conversations with third parties, it appears that these objects did not disappear, they just never existed. The only person who notices these inexplicable changes in the world is the main character. It remains a mystery to the viewer whether these are changes happening in the protagonist's head or vice versa, he is actually the only observer of the phenomenon. The erosion of reality and the disappearance of objects, places, and people in the protagonist's life is increasing, triggering a desperate desire to seek answers as to what is causing the phenomenon and an attempt to stop the process. The author of the text, Yerzmyey, claims that "The game is about growing loneliness and losing more loved ones. That's basically what life is about because we lose these people until we ourselves die - then it's us that someone else has lost."[9] The actual leitmotif is the inevitable disintegration of the world and the impossibility of getting answers as to what is causing this apocalypse. The plot allows for four alternative endings, but none of them is positive for the protagonist - neither does it undo the process of disappearance, nor does it stop the course of events. In two cases, it ends with the protagonist's suicide, in one with his death in a place where he experiences "boundless darkness and boundless despair"3, and in the fourth - with the end of the character's existence (or only the text about him, it is not resolved). The latter idea of breaking off the text in mid-sentence is a procedure to increase the sense of immersion in the plot, as it weaves the work's fictional world into the player's reality. The viewer of the work experiences the disappearance of a piece of his reality, in this case, the rest of the text, furthering the story. He can't be sure whether it's just an authorial intervention in the work or whether the disappearance of the reader's world has begun, and the lack of further text is the first sign of this. Authors first immerse the viewer in a world of fiction, and then leave him with the question of whether it is definitely just fiction. Such an element of the work's interaction with the player is a unique idea, increasing the viewer's involvement in the work.

The authors published and presented their work on dozens of computer-related websites and forums, where it found its way into repositories containing games and demoscene works. Placing the work on gaming and demoscene sites automatically defined the program's audience, as well as the context in which the work should be read - as a game and demoscene work, rather than as electronic literature. The authors even included an entry in the body of the documentation for the work that "it is not literature, but demoscene." 4 Explaining the purposefulness of such a publication procedure, Marecki explains, "There is a little affinity between the most important fields of cultural production in the field of digital media, such as games, media art, electronic literature, and demoscene. These fields communicate poorly with each other: people associated with the demoscene are unlikely to be interested in media art, and creators from the field of electronic literature do not participate in demoparties. It seems that the most connections exist between the demoscene and the gaming field." [2, 8] Since the communities that are consumers of a particular genre of digital works are in isolation, the authors consciously target those audiences to which they are historically and personally closest - in this case, the demoscene and gaming communities. The online comments accompanying the publication reflect the mindset of this community, for despite the predominantly literary component of the work, where there is very little to play, its audience declares that they have played or will play In nihilum reverteris, not that they will read the work.

The authors’ declaration, however, should be considered merely postulatory, since the work does not consist exclusively of game and demoscene components, and even they are not dominant. The author's disclaimer is probably intended to point out that the reception of their work as exclusively literary is meaningless and that the essential component is the context of demoscene culture. Several elements point to such a context. The authors are active participants in the demoscene community, centered around computer platforms of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Atari, ZX Spectrum, Commodore, and Amiga. The demoscene dimension of the work is also emphasized by the way some of its elements are implemented, often according to very strict and hermetic rules, understood only by demoscene participants, of which only a few will be mentioned below. When you press a combination of keys (hidden from the interactor, who can learn them through demoscene contacts), you can call up the so-called hidden screen, which displays the colorful captions "HOOY PROGRAM RULEZ!!!", a reference to the tradition of emphasizing self-value, in this case, the scene group of Yerzmyey and Hellboj. In the content of the scroll, a piece of software that animates the text to make it more visually appealing, in addition to information about the work, the content of a humorous nature is present: the laziness of the programmer is reproached, which allegedly caused the lack of support for scrolling pages of text backward. Such a personal digression is not found in other genres of digital works but is very characteristic of demoscene works, in which the aspect of authorial comments and jokes, separate from the content of the work but present in it, is extremely important. However, it should be clearly emphasized that despite these several attributes that characterize demoscene works, this is not that type of work. Argasinski explains that a demo "is a product that resembles a music video. It is music and animation, and I always point out that the animation has not been done before, it is created on the fly, it calculates all the time. This is the most essential and defining aspect of a demo: the art of real-time. At the same time, a demo is a genre on the borderline of art and science - the algorithms used in demos are sometimes highly complex."[2, 16] Such essential elements are not present in this work, so although it has the attributes of a demoscene creation, it would be untrue to say that the work is exclusively demoscene.

Electronic literature, from which the authors cut themselves, boasts a wealth of forms, although sometimes with boundaries that are blurred or difficult to grasp. Many literary works have ludic elements, while more than one game is supported by explicitly narrative literary elements[5]. This is also the case with In nihilum reverteris, where the main element of the program is text, which is displayed to the viewer of the work on a computer screen, suggesting that the work belongs to such genres as electronic literature or text-based games. While the literary and visual layers require only passive reception, the essence of the work is that the viewer actively decides which block of text the program will jump to. This is decided by indicating to the program the desired path of action from the pool of available ones by the recipient of the work. Nick Montfort calls him the interactor, due to the interactive nature between the program and its user [10, 7–11]. This raises a serious challenge for authors of electronic literature as to how to preserve traditional plot constructs, plot development, climax, and ending in an environment where it is the interactor who is supposed to determine the sequence of events. The conflict between the top-down approach, when the author decides the development of the story, and the bottom-up approach, in which the user chooses the direction the plot will take, has been resolved here to the detriment of the interactor. The plot is linear, and the options for alternative courses of action in the story are few and of little importance to the course of the plot. Even when there is a branching of the plot in the work, the authors lead the reader back towards a single resolution of the plot - the annihilation of the world. The interactor has the apparent possibility of choice, but all his choices are meaningless. This is a deliberate move on the part of the authors, coinciding with the content of the work, stripping the viewer of any causality or influence on events.

Unlike the traditional model of electronic literature, in which the task of the interactor is to combine associations or interpret a literary metaphor, here associations of objects are necessary, of which Hayles writes: "resemble the action of literary metaphor. However, in this situation, the common basis of meaning emerges not as a consequence of the juxtaposition of two words, but as an effect of the juxtaposition of two objects, resulting from the actions of the character directed by the reader. Thus, we are dealing with a kind of (...) embodied metaphor."[5] In In nihilum reverteris, there is no possibility of issuing commands, nor is there a command syntax analyzer as in text games, so there is no linking of objects, making it impossible to speak of embodied metaphors. Commands are limited to choosing from ready-made options, of which there are usually two, at most three at a time. Such a formula of a work, based on lexia and hyperlinks, with reduced possibility of interaction with the program by depriving the interactor of the field of his own search for alternatives or making mistakes, by replacing the parser with a simple selection of available options derives from paragraph games, a specific type of text games.

Paragraph games, although the term "gamebook” is also used, originated from printed literature. Elements of interaction were introduced in it to make reading more interesting. The reader could decide how the fate of the protagonist or the main plot should turn out, through choices from the options provided, and such a change of plotline was made by going to the indicated pages, ignoring the others that did not fit the current plot. In addition to varieties of this literature, focusing on the pursuit of the most literary form possible, there were also works equipped with additional elements: collecting and using items described in the plot, changing such parameters of the game hero as strength or luck, a handy file of information, and even statistics. It is these additional elements, more convenient for the interactor to explore within a computer program than a paper book, that have led to the popularization of paragraph games in the form of digital works on home computers. In nihilum reverteris, however, is a heavily literary paragraph game, with no additional elements to enrich the storyline. In the game, players must engage with the text presented in paragraphs. At pivotal moments in the plot, players are able to make decisions that directly influence the course of the narrative. The content and direction of the work are contingent upon these choices, highlighting the strong presence of electronic literature as a fundamental component. Thus, the component of electronic literature is so strongly exposed here that the authors’ cutting themselves off from such a character of the work is not justified.

The text is divided into chapters - as the authors call them5, paragraphs - as also accepted by the terminology of book games[2, 106], lexias or nodes - as in the analysis of electronic literature[7]. These are blocks of text with the character of a relatively coherent and indivisible whole, independent of other parts of the plot, but connected to them by connectors. Connectors are characteristic of hypertext novels, in which it is accepted to call them hyperlinks. The presence of early electronic literature productions previously determined the categorization of a work as a hypertext novel. However, the emergence of diverse navigation schemes and interface metaphors has rendered this determination no longer necessary. In nihilum reverteris twenty-one lexias can be distinguished, which generate a total of seventy-nine screens on the ZX Spectrum platform and contain twenty-six hyperlinks to other story blocks. Some blocks of text are accompanied by illustrations. Thanks to this modular approach, it is possible to create a work with multiple independent plot branches and endings. This is the foundation for creating the game's content.

However, in questioning whether the work can be classified as a game, it is important to consider the definition of a game. However, when considering whether the work, it is important to think about the definition of a game.Andre Laland, in the Dictionaire Philosophique, has proposed a definition of a game that distinguishes it from role-playing stories and other forms of play, and which is cited and detailed by Gonzalo Frasca: "an activity governed by a set of rules that determine victory or defeat, gain or loss."[3] A game is distinguished from other forms of play by the fact that, in the shortest terms, a game must result in a win or a loss. In In nihilum reverteris, there are four different endings, but none of them are positive for the protagonist, so there is no win or gain character. All plot solutions lead to defeat, so the plot provides an outcome, but always a negative one. Also, on the basis of game theory, there is no conflict situation here, the participant of which could adopt some strategy that would produce results[8]. In nihilum reverteris we do, in fact, reach the result of a defeat, regardless of the adopted strategy of conduct. The work's defiance of convention, by leading all plot solutions to the protagonist's defeat, makes the adopted strategy of action ultimately irrelevant. Only when one accepts Jesper Juul's explanation that „a game is a rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable"[6] we can consider In nihilum reverteris as a form of game. The results, although all negative, can be of varying value to the player, and his unawareness that all methods of proceeding and strategies lead to failure anyway causes him to make the effort to play. The consequences of his actions are optional because they lead to different results and negotiable because he can nevertheless choose different ways to achieve them.

The piece is not a typical digital work as it doesn't belong to a single genre. It lacks a clear defining element of winning, so it's not a classic game, but it does have the hallmarks of a computer game. It's also not a typical demoscene piece, but it does have some of its non-essential elements. Instead, it is equipped with a strong literary component, which is more similar to a hypertext novel or a paragraph game than to the "role-playing text game" declared by the authors. In addition, the authors disconnect themselves from the literary interpretation of their work and instead focus the audience's attention on the demoscene context. Considering all these factors, it can be assumed that it is a hybrid work, breaking the patterns of "genre purity," going beyond the traditional framework of digital work. It operates on the borderline of the mentioned genres - a computer game, demoscene work, hypertext novel, and paragraph game. It is not a pathological form, but a demonstration of the adaptability of digital works to combine different forms of expression, both traditional and electronic, absorbing their structures, meanings, and narrative modes. Ian Bogost predicted such a direction for the development of digital works, claiming that they form a framework within which video games, print literature, electronic literature, and software languages will be interrelated, interpenetrating spheres [1, 136]. These diverse inspirations from various genres have provided new creative opportunities to influence the emotional experience of the viewer. They have given the audience the chance to choose their own path through the plot, while ultimately reducing the impact of these choices on the story's conclusion. Such a hybrid form, from a combination of electronic literature and computer games, whose aesthetics were produced in a very niche demoscene context, seems to be a unique way of expression to strip the viewer of illusions of influence on the world around us.

1Files available on UBU Lab website: http://ubulab.edu.pl/projects/in-nihilum-reverteris/, (14/06/2024)

2In the documentation of the work in a file named InstrukcjaNihilumPL.txt.

3Excerpt from the plot of "In nihilum reveteris".

4Documentation of the work in a file named InstrukcjaNihilumPL.txt.

5In an internal, unpublished technical report for UBU Lab.