It seems like now would be an excellent time to reflect on why you, once a consistently above-average student fill of ambition and love, just bought an unknown but almost certainly illegal substance from a stranger and drank it without a second thought. It would be nice if there were a single moment you could use in the event of autobiography that would illustrate what happened to you. Why you feel listless during the day and stay up till two in the morning most nights. The truth is, there's no story to be told. It just happened, one second at a time, and now you just have to live with it.
Blue Chairs. A chance to change.
Blue Chairs is a 2004 Mind Screwy Interactive Fiction game written by Chris Klimas.— The game's introduction
It revolves around the (mis)adventures of a young man called Dante who buys a mysterious green substance from a strange man at a party. Upon taking it, he receives a phone call from his long-lost love Beatrice, and goes on a surreal journey through the night city to find her.
The game is considered one of the classics of the genre alongside Photopia and Varicella, and has received numerous awards, including Best Game, Best Writing, and Best Story at the annual Xyzzy Awards, and #2 prize at the Interactive Fiction Competition 2004. It has also been compared to movies like Mulholland Dr. and Waking Life. It can be downloaded here
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This game provides examples of:
- Arc Symbol: The titular blue chairs, and the blue color in general, which appears whenever things get surreal.
- The Lost Lenore: It is heavily implied that Beatrice is dead. Let's see: Dante goes on a journey through a surreal alternate reality to find her. Upon arriving at her house, he sees that it's destroyed by fire. He climbs to the roof and finds Beatrice there; she stands on thin air without falling. And of course, there are Dante and Beatrice's names.
- Multiple Endings:
- When you meet Beatrice at the roof of her house, she asks you whether what's happening now is real. If you answer "yes", you join her in the other world (presumably the afterlife), and live together happily forevermore.
- If you answer "no", you wake up after the party, back in the normal world. Now you have a mystery to solve about what really happened to you.
- At the very beginning of the game, you can also decline to buy the drug from the mysterious man, which means you go on with your ordinary life.
- Mushroom Samba: Dante's entire trip could be a drug-induced hallucination, as evidenced by one of the endings, in which he wakes up in the morning after the party. Or not.
- Shout-Out: You can find multiple keys in the game, including an ornate blue key. This may be a reference to Mulholland Dr..
- Snow Means Death: The happiest ending, in which Dante presumably joins Beatrice in the afterlife, has them running through the snow.
- Together in Death: This is one possible interpretation of the happiest ending. Dante arrives at Beatrice's house to find it destroyed by fire. At the roof of the house's remains he finds Beatrice who stands on air without falling. If he chooses to join her, they float together to the ground and end up in a Paradise-like world where they can be happy forever.It's time, you know. It's time for Beatrice and you to run through the snow, to fall over and lose your balance when she tries to chuck a snowball right into your face. It's time for hot chocolate; lots of marshmallows for you, none for her. For staring out a window and thinking how hard the day had been and how easy it has become. Time for books. For kisses.
It's time for nights that grow longer and longer, though you don't miss the sun. Lamplight keeps you warm. Time for sweaters and long coats. Time for some things to be remembered and most things to be forgotten.
It's time for a New Year's Eve that never ends. - World of Mysteries: The game in general gives off this vibe, especially the part with the maze in the supermarket freezer. Dante encounters multiple motionless people there, and each of these people has their own mysterious backstory:Jeff is twenty-six now; married for four years now. It was so sudden, the way it happened, but it also felt inescapably right. He is in love, maybe always will be. He has a graveyard shift job, but it's not important. It's enough right now to be able to come home to a home whose every corner he knows, and Amanda asleep for so long already.
His father leaves messages for him at work — somehow he found him. Jeff deletes them all without listening to them. Some things can't be forgiven.
One night after work, he notices a light on in his house. He doesn't know what to think — the front door is still locked. The stairs in his house creak so loudly. He doesn't hear anything happening. He opens the bedroom door.
This is how it happens. This is how his life changes.
