Adapted from my devlog on itch.io
The Story
90s RPG nostalgia meets the post-9/11 forever wars.
Zero Alvarez enlisted to help end the war, but when her tank gets blown up, she gets a new mission: Heal. The doctors promise her a second chance at life if she completes their experimental therapy.
Zero must rebuild her mind and forge new neural pathways while playing Wayfarers, a JRPG-style fantasy. Reluctantly, she teams up with fellow patient and player, the sarcastic and emoji-loving Ada. Together, they recover memories of the world they once loved.
When the final boss battle looms, Zero is alone again. Will she escape the labyrinth of Wayfarers, or go back for her only friend?
Development
I wrote the first draft of Wayfarers in the spring of 2013. This started as an exercise for a writing class I took during my MFA program. In his course, Rick Moody focused on the various literary devices used before the invention of the modern novel. Looking back at my notes, I see we read Scheherazade. Like the princess’s nested tales, did Wayfarers originally begin as a story within a story?
Wayfarers was a traditional short story. I submitted it to a few sff publications and received positive rejections. Even as I struggled to place it, I also wrestled with the format. The story used various fonts to separate different voices and experiences, but I also sensed that I wanted this to have visuals and music. How could I pull that off?
In 2021, I played Casey Ramos’s spectacular Twine game unfolding. I realized that this could be the right format for Wayfarers. Using Twine, I could create multiple pathways for the narrator to follow. I could add music. I could incorporate design.
Time passed… I had a baby. I became a stay-at-home mom with my hands full of a growing toddler.
In the winter of 2024, I decided that Wayfarers could not wait any longer. I started learning Twine. I signed up for Spring Thing 2025 to give myself a hard deadline. It was rough! Many nights, exhausted after putting my toddler to bed, I opened my laptop and got to work.
I asked my brother, professional musician and composer Oscar Suh-Rodriguez, to write the main theme to evoke the RPGs that I remember fondly. I prompted him with songs I had learned to play on the piano as a kid: “To Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy X and “Dearly Beloved” from Kingdom Hearts. As I worked on the game, I listened to the Chrono Cross OST.
Wayfarers received positive praise and helpful critiques from the Spring Thing community on intfiction.org, as well as the following audience awards: Best NPC, Most Nostalgic, Best Writing. Playing some of the other entries helped me recognize some basic mistakes I had made and just how much diversity there is to find in interactive fiction!
I have made revisions and I am proud to be officially launching Wayfarers on itch.io in September 2025 in time for the second annual LKBF Storytellers Conference.
Inspiration
Wayfarers owes a debt to Joan Manuel Serrat’s “Cantares,” based on Antonio Machado’s glorious poem. I grew up listening to Serrat in my parents’ music-filled home. I sing this song to myself frequently, along with Silvio Rodriguez’s “Ojalá.” ¡Caminante, no hay camino!