Interactive narrative / 2020
Four voices tell one Chinese myth. The visitor hears their testimony and decides who is guilty.
A three-week remote collaboration by Yiting Liu and Wen Chen for Out of Order, taught by Kio Stark and Mia Rovegno in Fall 2020.
Case study / STAR
Situation
In Fall 2020, remote collaboration made a physical experience difficult. The Legend of the White Snake offered romance, mysticism, and an episodic story, but this adaptation saw room to deepen Miss Teal and the Monk alongside Miss White and Xu Xian. Rashōmon inspired the idea that no single account should settle the truth.
Task
For the Out of Order class, the team set four goals: give visitors agency, develop all four characters, create intimacy with them, and tell the story through text and shapes rather than images or video. Character, theme, and spectacle had to come from the interaction itself.
Action
Yiting Liu and Wen Chen framed the flood as a case for the visitor to judge and wrote four testimony paths together. Yiting built the web interface and organized the questions and answers in a spreadsheet for implementation; Wen led the aesthetic design. Distinct colored moving circles and expressive audio gave each voice its own presence. Two rounds of user testing led the team to use audio for the emotion of each answer instead of recording every word.
Result
The three-week collaboration produced a browser experience in which visitors hear four accounts and choose a verdict. The original project notes report that feedback after the audio revision was positive and that testers felt a connection with the characters. This is feedback from the project, not a measured audience outcome.
The story remains the center
Adapted from the Legend of the White Snake, the experience turns the visitor into a judge. The court setting gives each character room to speak before the visitor chooses a verdict.
01 / Story beat
An unnatural flood at the Golden Temple killed innocent creatures. Miss White is accused of causing it.
02 / Story beat
The visitor hears from Xu Xian, Miss White, Miss Teal, and the Monk. Each voice adds a perspective to the same event.
03 / Story beat
The visitor becomes the judge and decides whether Miss White or the Monk is guilty.
Character design
The adaptation gives Miss Teal and the Monk the same attention as Miss White and Xu Xian. Color, movement, text, and audio distinguish the four characters without depicting them literally.
Process notes
The team chose a website so the story could be reached during pandemic restrictions and shared for feedback. With no character images or video, the circles' color and motion, the text, and the audio invite visitors to imagine each person. This keeps attention on the testimony.
Yiting organized the branching dialogue in an original question-and-answer spreadsheet ↗. The audio direction changed after two rounds of testing: sounds came to express the feeling behind an answer, while the words remained on screen.
The original notes identify three next iterations:
These are documented future ideas, not features claimed as part of the 2020 prototype.
Experience the work
Explore the playable story, then read the original process notes for the script, character, audio, and interaction decisions.
Play The White Snake ↗