Games are a type of performance activity, with the player becoming a performer while playing a videogame. In the case of story-based games, the player’s performance brings together story and game.

This presentation will focus on adventure games, a story-based genre whose gameplay mainly consists of puzzle-solving. An adventure game is also a simulation, the intersection between the rule system of the game and its fictional world. The simulation provides a performance space and establishes how the player can act in it. The player does not perform directly in the fictional world, but through the player character. The game design establishes a specific set of actions necessary to complete both the game and the story; these actions constitute a behavior that the player must restore through performance. The player thus becomes an actor without a script, and has to figure out what actions will simultaneously make her progress in the game and advance the story.

These concepts will be illustrated by demonstrating Rosemary, a short adventure game about remembering. This game models the mechanics of memory, inspired by Quintillian’s Memory Palaces. Rosemary does not rely on the player’s memory; rather the player performs the actions that help the player character remember events and people. By exploring the world, the player will uncover the missing script of her performance.