Traveler is a nuanced and touching text game about… finding where you belong? It's an abstract space travel adventure, where you drift among planets with an eye on your ever-falling system gauges, thinking about your home, your family, your mission.
You encounter many sets of planets and moons, send your communication signal out into the darkness, and worry—or, I worried—about what is going to become of you, where you are from and whether you will ever make it back there. With the gentle background of stars and the soft, atmospheric sighing of machines, it's easy to read Traveler as a metaphor for things more important and eternal even than space adventure.
Traveler is made by Caelyn Sandel and is commissioned by The Yearbook Office, which publishes a variety of essays categorized as "writings on staying alive." It seems Sandel's work is the first of a series of planned Twine gaes for the site.
It's nice to see sites focused on writing interested in publishing Twine games; the Yearbook Office says that "some of the best writing being done right now is in Twine". Two years ago, The New Inquiry (one of my favorite publications, one to which I've contributed a couple of times) published Parasite, a Twine game by Porpentine.
