This Lime-tree Bower my Prison

This Inform7 game was written for the Narrascope Game Jam 2020. 

The theme of ‘growth’ reminded me of Coleridge’s ‘This Lime-tree Bower my Prison’. That poem was written when, having badly hurt his foot, Coleridge was thinking of everything he could have done and seen, instead of being laid up at home. 

It is a lockdown poem. It is about missing out on the adventure quest. 

Inform 7, I found, is sympathetic to the poem, in allowing for interaction with a detailed immediacy. 

My game is a contemporary retelling, though here and there I have quoted from Coleridge’s poem and his letters. 

Thank you to the Judith A. Pintar and instructors of the Inform7 Bootcamp, University of Illinois, who taught me to work with Inform7. Thank you to Caleb Wilson and Mike Stage who playtested the game.