Where the Trees Remember

Where the Trees Remember

Author/Designer: Billie Moore

Winner of the USM Interactive Literature Contest (2025)

The purpose for this piece of interactive fiction is to take the player through a simulated walk through my neighborhood. There is only one option at the moment, which is 'Straight, heading to Kamper Park,' but the goal of the game is to provide the player with three separate routes to 'walk' through different parts of Hattiesburg. I chose to make this my game simply because going on walks brings me a lot of joy and has helped me process a lot of my own experiences and thoughts. The game utilizes links and passages to walk players through the neighborhood, while also simultaneously giving the players snippets of memories or thoughts and opinions from the narrator. It utilizes a second-person point of view, hoping to immerse players in the game as if it was them walking and remembering as the game progresses. The narrative is built upon the player 'noticing' things during their walk, which activates memories associated with their environment.