The Stars is an interactive poem game made with Twine and loosely based on Emily Dickinson’s “My Life has Stood – a Loaded Gun.”
The starlight we see in the night sky is old; because the stars the light is from are so far away, even traveling as fast as light does, it takes quite a while to reach Earth. In many cases, a lot of the stars we “see” have been dead for some time, but the light they produced is still traveling to Earth.
This poem takes this concept and compares it to relationships and memories we have of other people. Memories can seem fresh and strong even though their source is gone; however, eventually life catches up and all the “stars” die out. The player is able to navigate the stars in any order they wish, therefore creating a slightly different individual experience and interpretation depending on the order.
The player navigates the game by clicking on the yellow stars, which represent specific memories the narrator has. The image below shows the layout of the poem and how the different pages are mapped to each other.
Sarah Veith 