An interactive story that takes you on a journey of self-exploration | Hacker News Reader

An interactive story that takes you on a journey of self-exploration

betwixt.life

68 pointsghgr30 comments

Why aren't there any images from the game?? Even in the app store, there are just promo photos.

"Replace addictive scrolling with mindful entertainment." Hmm, this gives me pause. "Mindful" entertainment is no nobler than any other variety of scrolling.

"Mindful entertainment" is an oxymoron and quite ridiculous to read for anyone who practices true mindfulness-based meditation.

True mindfulness cannot be found on a screen.

I didn't know you could do mindfulness wrong.

Any attempt to be mindful is probably better than no attempt, but I'd say, Yes, there are better and worse ways.

One that took me some time to learn is to not put effort or striving into the activity. Especially with that most common form of mindfulness, breath meditation, it's very easy to be very effortful about it. And that's IMO not the path you want.

Someone probably said this about book reading in the past. Me personally, I find it’s about my quality of attention regardless if I am on the screen or not. But I can see that it is easy to confuse familiar things we get lost in and associate to mindlessness.

Imagine you were training for a marathon. There's a right way to do it and many wrong ways to do it. You could injure your body by training poorly.

Mindfulness is the same way. There are correct techniques and hundreds of very wrong ways to go about it.

> Why aren't there any images from the game??

I think there is an image of the game in the Play app store... it looks like this is a text based choose your own adventure game.

https://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/nOqkSR1E88LtWzpdwFdayV...

It looks like the interactivity is through an unfolding story where you press buttons to choose the narrative path.

Is there any true mindfulness?

Yes, but not under a commoditization format. Maybe a product or service can increase the willingness and earnestness of the seeker, but ultimately, just like there's no golden path to geometry, it's up to the seeker.

Can you expand on "no golden path to geometry"? I've not heard this and my mind immediately went to Phi - it seems to me that in geometry, there actually is a path, e.g. anyone would arrive to parallel line axioms and platonic solids ..

So to be exact, it's Euclid saying "there is no royal road to geometry". So Euclid means that a king for example couldn't spend a bunch of money to acquire an understanding of geometry, rather, just like a peasant he would have to go through the effort of thought to arrive at a proficiency with the ideas. It's not a saying that means there is no logically coherent path or something like that, it's a socially concerned comment that wealth or power won't necessarily give you a shortcut to true wisdom and knowledge.

It's interesting to me that the conversation went in this particular direction off of the original question.

Sam Harris has a commodotized mindfulness app and I've encountered little other than praise.

Maybe if they had a single screenshot of the game... Why do I need to know the founders before I see a screenshot?

Knowing the background of the creators isn't so bad when it's about mental health. Screenshots of the game are in respective app store, one click away.

> Screenshots of the game are in respective app store, one click away

you'd think so but nope, the "download" link takes me to the iOS app store, presumably because I'm on a mac.

But the screenshots there don't tell much anyway, and I own an android.

I _think_ it's a text-based adventure.

"download" link, as in https://app-download.betwixt.life/ is blank without js... and looking at source it just checks navigator.userAgent / navigator.platform for iphone/ipad/android/mac

Anyway, google store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=betwixt.web.ap... That does have a few screenshots, but, for what it looks like a web version would be just as well.

Because they are "women engineers" (Silicon Valley sitcom reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY).

Also ex-athlete slash Master Practitioner of Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Clinical Hypnosis and not the other way around

"At 25, she left her software business and spent a year talking to young people"

No offense (well ok, when you say that you are about to offend), but I almost spit out my coffee laughing at that statement. You know, the _young_ people I was talking too.. because, well, I am so _OLD_ at 25.

Damn. I wonder what you tell your therapist at 50? That you are ancient?

And I still have no idea what the game looks like, as the other poster said, why no in game shots?

I wonder if "spent a year talking to young people" is just a euphemism for "kicked around for a while before going back to work". I know that, at age 25, young people constituted the majority of people I spoke with as well.

I've installed and played the game. It's Zork, but without anything important to do, and the words are thrown at you 3-4 at a time like a reader of a children's story who's had too much coffee.

Fascinating app (and that's from someone who doesn't play games). I'd love a mode that's strictly geared towards character strengths.

P.S. By the way, it's from 2021.

Maybe if it was available on PC or as a web site... given it's just an Android/iOS app, I'll skip.

It’s a text game with ambient sounds, background and buttons. No paywall or signup (yet), it just starts. Tbh, didn’t like it because as with most scripted scenarios it can’t guess how I really feel or react internally to things, but it tries to describe it. I just can’t relate. In the first story, there’s a voice in my head while I’m in a piercing blizzard. I wouldn’t even listen to it and think that I’m losing my mind and need to find shelter fast, instead of looking up, down, speaking to it asking where I am, etc. It doesn’t make sense to me neither realistically nor metaphorically, but YMMW.

Agreed, same with having only one choice at some points of the adventure. You decide to dig out the dark shape only to be asked to dig more and then dig more and dig more once again. I hope it at least measures how fast I click 'dig' again.

Edit: I'm not even gonna finish the first story. The classic trope where you talk to a npc and they have a set of questions that you have to ask them. I don't care about an npc and what they have to say.

same experience, I can't relate to its 1st-person pov at all.

Could something like GPT help?

Screenshots would convince me to download the app more

Am I missing it, or does this fail to convey the key information: how long does it take?

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