| Engine: | Twine |
| Released: | October 1, 2014 |
| Genre: | Interactive fiction |
| Modes: | Single-player |
| Developer: | Porpentine |
With Those We Love Alive is a Twine interactive fiction game written by Porpentine. It was released on October 1, 2014 in both English and Hungarian.[1] The musical score was composed by Brenda Neotenomie.
The game was created using Twine. It uses pink text to navigate through the story and purple text to change a word within a particular node of the story. Readers put in information at the start of the story, which will change the text slightly.[2]
During certain points of the story, the player is asked to draw sigils on their skin. By the end of the game, the reader is left with a representation of their choices on their own body.[3]
With Those We Love Alive takes place in a world that is both repugnant and beautiful with colorful language describing the twisted landscape and events of the world. It takes place in a restrictive society that gives you no choice but to obey and nowhere to escape.[4] The story begins with the Skull Empress guiding you to her palace to craft many artifacts for her, but between main events, you are allowed to explore the palace and surrounding areas to be greeted with vivid descriptions of this fantasy world.[5] The descriptions of these locations start becoming repetitive after subsequent visits leading some players to continually sleep to advance to the next errand the Skull Empress would have you complete.
Adding to an overall sense of dread, "dead people" start to appear in random locations conveyed through blunt text, alluding to the fact that death is common or an expected aspect of day to day life. These aforementioned dead people are only ever acknowledged by the main character which may allude to the fact they are hallucinations, but whether or not they actually are is left uncertain. The culmination of the story explores resistance against the oppressive and escape into a future controlled by yourself, however uncertain. After your childhood friend arrives at the palace, you flee together with their future left uncertain.
Porpentine has directly stated that of the influences for With Those We Love Alive being "...mob violence, trash struggle, C-PTSD, and child abuse".[6] Other influences include the inclusion of queer elements, and "trash girls".[7]
The Guardian notes Porpentine's surrealist style of storytelling remains present in this work while praising Porpentine's ingenuity in imploring the reader to draw on their own skin for making the story uncomfortable yet memorable.[8]
A Rock, Paper, Shotgun article by Alice O'Connor praises the vivid and descriptive text of the world-building and exploratory elements of the piece. O'Conner comments that the aspect of drawing sigils on your skin denote "...you're marking and changing yourself in response to cruel and oppressive things".[9]
With Those We Love Alive won Best Writing and Best Individual NPC at the 2014 XYZZY awards,[10] as well as receiving 5th place at 2014's Interactive Fiction Competition.[11]