A Vast and Lonely Desert

Two men wander through the desert.

Arrow keys or WASD to move. Approach the cowboy and use arrow keys or WASD to converse.

This game was made in Bitsy. It also uses the Bitsy hacks Bitsymuse and Exit from Dialog; both were implemented via Borksy. The poem is Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road." Wind sound effect by Mark DiAngelo. Fire sound effect by Dynamicell. Both were lightly edited. Both used in accordance with CC Attribution 3.0 license. Finally, this game is not part of the Gay Western Jam--it's a bit late for that--but it is sort of inspired by it.

From the Electronic Literature Collection Vol. 4: "This walking simulator, made using the free game maker Bitsy, radically expands who gets to make games, and to what use games can be put. While conversation about serious games and Twine games have done a lot to de-center AAA and indie games with high production values as the sine qua non of gaming, A Vast and Lonely Desert takes it further, stripping game making down to mere blocks of color running and triggering conversation; but there’s no threat to “run” from except self-acceptance. Very simple dialog and sonic elements such as the sound of the campfire ironically invoke the lush expansiveness of queer life Walt Whitman glimpses in Brooklyn and Song of Myself. Invoking Whitman, author Davis G. See is freed from making “great” art, but the ironic distance he summons never overwhelms the piece. A Vast and Lonely Desert maps the loneliness of closeted queer life into the metaphor of the desert. Two 8-bit characters find a way to survive, to each other, and something more."