Waiting for Gondólf

Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy extraordinaire Waiting For Godot meets the high fantasy genre in this epic Twine parody about — yes, you got it — waiting!

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Content warning

Alcohol consumption (optional) / Existentialism / Waiting (explicit)

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A few tips

• Set some time aside. The challenge is to make it through this quest in one sitting, lest you be deemed unworthy of the wizard Gondólf’s presence.
• Waiting for Gondólf plays directly in your browser, no download required. Its interface does not fare particularly well on mobile phones.
• The game features sound, though it may not reveal itself immediately.
• Lastly, remember to press F11 on your keyboard and enjoy the absorbedness of fullscreen.

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Credits and acknowledgements

This is an academic project by Renato Baroni.

Illustrations by Mariana Cheniaux.

~ sound ~

Tavern ambience provided by Michael Ghelfi Studios. (They offer licenses for games, and here's their Spotify.)

Other sound effects come from freesound.org and Epidemic Sound libraries.

Instrumental music belongs mostly to the soundtrack from A Serious Man, by Carter Burwell. 

Atmosphéres and Lux Aeterna, used for the meditation scene, were composed by György Ligeti.

The Old Walking Song was written by J.R.R Tolkien, composed and performed by Caspar Reiff with the Tolkien Ensemble.

Dem Milners Trern was composed by Mark Markovich Warshawsky, and performed by Sidor Belarsky.

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Generative AI wasn't used for creating this story, which means that bits of writing stolen here and there were stolen with human intent. Other than Beckett's play, this work shamelessly adapts chunks from:

Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard  --(Questions game);

Seinfeld s3e23 The Keys, written by Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry Charles -- (Do you Yearn? dialogue);

True Detective s1e1 The Long Bright Dark, written by Nic Pizzolatto -- (Walk Hand in Hand Into Extinction monologue);

The Order of Time, book by Carlo Rovelli -- (Gondólf's lecture on time).