The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
by Ryan Veeder (2014)
Genres: Adaptation

A Real Novel by Edgar Allan Poe.

action: %
response: ]  Secret Compartment



You are in a dark secret compartment hidden in a ship that you are stowing away in.
action: About yourself
response: You are Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
action: You check your inventory
response: You are carrying:
a ham
action: You examine the ham
response: You remember this ham being delicious.

You hear the sounds of a bloody mutiny!
action: Wait
response: Time passes.

Hey, your dog is in here!
action: You look at the dog
response: Your faithful dog is on this boat with you, somehow.

You are going nuts with hunger!
action: You eat the ham
response: The ham is incredibly disgusting! You eat it regardless!
action: Look around
response: You are in a dark secret compartment hidden in a ship that you are stowing away on.

You can see your dog here.
action: You ask the dog about the dog
response: There is no reply.

Your friend shows up and pulls you out of the secret compartment.

Onboard The Ship (Mutiny)
You are on the ship, which has been mutinized. Your friend is here.
action: You examine friend
response: Whoops! Pretty soon a storm kicks up and shipwrecks all y'all!

Onboard The Ship (Wreck)
Everyone is super hungry. There is a hole that leads down to the food.

You can see your friend, your dog and a half-Indian here.
action: Go down
response: You are only strong enough to dive down in the hole and not retrieve anything. Oh, how sad.

But you need to eat something! Or someone???
action: You eat yourself
response: You're plainly inedible.
action: You ask Friend,  to go downward
response: The friend has better things to do.

You are so hungry. It's insane.
action: You examine the indian
response: I'm pretty sure this guy is half-Indian. I don't remember his name.
action: You look at the friend
response: Your best friend helped you stow away on this boat and also brought your dog along without telling you.

You are so hungry.
action: You eat the dog
response: Maybe you eat the dog at this point, or maybe the dog dies some other way. I don't remember. We'll say you eat the dog.

But you're still hungry! Hungry enough to eat a fellow human.

You are so hungry. Actually it's kind of ridiculous that you haven't starved to death yet.
action: You look around
response: Onboard The Ship (Wreck)
Everyone is super hungry. There is a hole that leads down to the food.

You can see your friend and a half-Indian here.
action: Go east
response: It is impossible to go anywhere, because it's just ocean in all directions. Maybe also sharks?
action: You eat friend
response: The time has come to eat your friend. You drew straws earlier so you know that it's your friend who gets to get eaten.

You kill your friend and then you eat your friend's body. We shall pass over this moment without dwelling on how grisly a moment it is.
pass over this moment without dwelling on how grisly a moment it is.It is incredibly grisly. This is probably the worst situation that can happen, for a guy to consume another guy as food, even under desperate shipwreck circumstances like these. Your actions are unavoidable and yet unforgiveable. And so gross. So grisly.

Okay, I'm done. You're probably strong enough to go down into that hole now.
action: Go downward
response: When you dive into the hole you are able to pull up some pickles!

You are so hungry, you could eat... your friend.
action: You look at the pickles
response: Maybe they were cucumbers, up until the shipwreck. Eh? Eh???
action: You eat the pickles
response: You and the half-Indian eat the pickles and laugh heartily about how delicious they are. Delightful!
action: Go downwards
response: When you dive into the hole you are able to pull up some pickles!
action: You ask the indian about himself
response: You can only do that to something animate.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
a pickles
action: Go downwards
response: When you dive into the hole you are able to pull up some pickles!

Hey there's a ship coming this way!
action: You look at the ship
response: Actually this ship is covered in corpses! Everyone on this ship died, and now their bodies are just waving around in the breeze while they putrefy. Grisly.

I don't remember whether this ship shows up before or after you find the pickles. Actually, I'm not totally sure they were pickles. I'm writing all of this from memory, and it was like a month or two ago when I listened to that audiobook.
action: You examine the bodies
response: This ship is covered in corpses! Everyone on this ship died, and now their bodies are just waving around in the breeze while they putrefy. Grisly.
action: You take bodies
response: That's hardly portable.
action: Look around
response: Onboard The Ship (Wreck)
Everyone is super hungry. There is a hole that leads down to the food.

You can see a half-Indian here.
action: Go north
response: It is impossible to go anywhere, because it's just ocean in all directions. Maybe also sharks?

Well eventually you get rescued by this other ship and they take you to this weird island in Antarctica.

I don't know if it's called "Antarctica" in the book. It's supposed to be in the area of the south pole, though.

This is an island populated by black people! But they aren't African people. They are literally black. It's totally possible that they function as a metaphor for African people, of course. I think most 21st-century readers are going to go with a race-centric reading, although there have been other interpretations.

The chief of the whatever-they're-called wants you to follow him to the west.

You can see a half-Indian, an egg, a polar bear corpse, a weird river and a chief here.
action: You take all
response: half-Indian: Taken.
egg: Taken.
polar bear corpse: It is too heavy to pick up.
weird river: Taking the river would make about as much sense as anything else, but I'm not gonna let you.
action: You look at the bear
response: There are gigantic polar bears here, and one of them died, and this is its body. The black people are terrified even of its corpse, for whatever reason! It may be worth mentioning that this polar bear, like the mundane, nonfictional polar bears of the Arctic, is white.
action: You examine the river
response: The water of this island has veins? I don't know. The description in the book goes into a lot of detail, but totally fails to convey any coherent image. I would reproduce that description here but I promised myself I wouldn't look at the text of the book while writing this game—and I, Edgar Allan Poe, always keep my promises.
action: You look at the egg
response: The egg is very white! The black people are terrified of it.
action: You go west
response: Canyon (Ambush)
The chief and his retinue lead you white guys (and the one half-Indian guy) to a canyon. And then there's an ambush! The natives totally get the drop on you! And you and the half-Indian are separated from the others! Or the others all die maybe. And you end up in a cave!
action: Look around
response: Oh whoops! Like I was saying, you end up in a cave.

This cave extends in various directions.

You can see a half-Indian here.
action: You look at what you're carrying with you
response: You are carrying:
an egg
a pickles
action: Go downward
response: The half-Indian guy follows you. As you walk through the cave, you notice that its passages take the form of a character of the ancient Ethiopian alphabet, although this surely is a coincidence.

You end up in another cave.

This cave extends in various directions.

You can see a half-Indian here.
action: Go north
response: The half-Indian guy follows you. This cave is also shaped like another Ethiopian letter. How odd!

You end up in a third cave.

This cave extends in various directions.

You can see a half-Indian here.
action: You go to the east
response: The half-Indian guy follows you. Another Ethiopian letter. Still, three coincidences in a row doesn't mean anything.
Anyway you climb out of the cave! You are pursued by the natives! You take one of them captive and escape on one of their canoes! You paddle out into mysterious mist!

The canoe floats through the white mist.

You can see a half-Indian and a captive here.

You feel uneasy.
action: You examine the mist
response: It's all over the place. But it's not cold, even though you're supposedly near the south pole.
action: You examine captive
response: He is incredibly terrified of how white everything is out here. Around now you find out that even his teeth are black.

A white bird flies past, shrieking TEKELI-LI
action: You examine the bird
response: They are freaky birds.

More birds! TEKELI-LI TEKELI-LI
action: You show the egg to the bird
response: You can only do that to something animate.
action: You ask the captive about the bird
response: There is no reply.

The canoe enters a whirlpool!
action: Wait
response: Time passes.

You are still going down the whirlpool!
action: You jump
response: You jump on the spot.

There's a white man in the center of the whirlpool!
action: You give the captive to the white man
response: (first taking the captive)
The white man doesn't seem interested.

Now you're right up in on the white man!

He is standing in the middle of the whirlpool. He is huge. He has a beard. He is totally white. He is beckoning you.
beard. He is totally white. He is beckoning you.TEKELI-LI
beard. He is totally white. He is beckoning you.TEKELI-LISo, at this point in the book, I (Edgar Allan Poe) explain that you (Arthur Gordon Pym) died before you could write down what happened next. You apparently survived your encounter with the white man, because you were around to write everything else in the story and then ask me to publish it under my own name, but obviously you should have died at that part of the story, so instead you died while writing it down.

The story closes with this fantastic fake Bible quote, and while it was very important for me to not read any of the original story while writing this groundbreaking interactive version, I do want to make sure I reproduce this fake Bible quote correctly, so I'm going to break my rule and go look at the original version:
"I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock."