Some Housekeeping

Let me start this reflection by thanking everyone who’s played THE CRIMSON LINE, left a comment, or shared it with someone else. It means a lot to have a story like this taken seriously by so many people, and through this process THE CRIMSON LINE has become one of my most read works. Thank you! 

If you happened to like the music I composed for this short story, you can listen to the tracks on youtube or on bandcamp. You can also download the “TCL Wallpaper + Music Pack.zip” file from the itch page to get the background + music files directly.

Writing About Memories

I’m not sure if readers/players of my recent projects would agree with this assessment, but when I look back at the projects I’ve written and released in the past few months, I see a lot of stories about memories. THE CRIMSON LINE is no exception.

THE CRIMSON LINE is about the uncertainty of memories in the context of conflict and violence. The first part of the story is dark and intense. Two characters barely manage to flee their home as the town descends into violence. During the second part of the story, one character returns home to find a different town from the one they remember. This reaches a head at the end of the story when the main character finds out the train tracks present in the formative moment in the first part of the story don’t exist, and have never existed, in this town. The narrator’s memories no longer align with reality. 

The uncertainty in the narrative around what exactly happened here was one of my primary goals with writing this story, but for the sake of discussion let me outline some of the key possibilities that went through my head (and through some readers!) about what may have happened. Firstly, the main character could have gotten the wrong town all together. This reading is especially bleak when considering the wishes of the character accompanying the main character in the first part of the story to be buried in their hometown. Alternatively, the protagonist may be in the right spot, but their memory of how they left may be incorrect. This idea is interesting to me as it challenges the notion that our memories of big, formative events in our lives are as solid as we may think they are. What does it mean when we can’t correctly remember the important moments of our lives? Finally, I think it’s possible that the main character’s recollections of the train tracks going through town are correct, but that through a history of violence, reality has rewritten itself into something different than how the main character perceived it.

Ultimately, out of the above possible explanations for the events of the story (and the many other possibilities I haven’t thought of), THE CRIMSON LINE chooses not to explain itself. I think the uncertainty in this situation is tonally quite eerie because it reflects how we don’t usually have easy answers to big, complicated questions like these.

Final Notes

If you had an entirely different take on THE CRIMSON LINE, please leave a comment and let me know about it! I don’t want anyone to think that they “didn’t get it” if they walked away from this project with different thoughts than what I came in with.

If you enjoyed this story and would be interested in reading similar stories from me, I’d like to recommend my first game, SALTWATER, which was made in the same engine as THE CRIMSON LINE. In a little less than a week from now, I’ll also be releasing my visual novel, REPEAT IT BACK TO ME, which I’ve spent the past few months writing and illustrating.

Thank you for reading,

Sky