Description:

Goodnight Molly is an interactive digital storybook where a babysitter recounts a fairytale to a pedantic child. This is an interactive digital book for 18-25-year-olds, exploring how young modern audiences reinterpret and retell old stories. Why we would want to make or not make these edits and the effects that have. This project was inspired by personal experiences reading to family and the Roald Dahl sensitivity reprints.

There isn’t an objective marker for whether an adaptational change is worthy. Only if the change suits the teller's philosophies, goals, or medium (disregarding malicious intent). Reading to children is a context that personal experience has shown two sides of. There is a permanent written text and a fluid oral text transformed on the spot. An adaptive canon that exists primarily for one audience member. A child who is entertained until they fall asleep, a little educated if possible. Goodnight Molly gives the user a simulation of this storytelling freedom. They can choose to make the story fun for the child, follow her whims, or remove outdated, violent, or sexist content. Or they might not. Neither the accurate nor inaccurate ending is the best outcome. Understanding the child's desires and failing the gameplay sections to let her take control leads to a genuine connection between generations.

The original oral Celtic tale was first written and printed in the 18th century, and Goodnight Molly draws its serif tyography from this first publication. The cartoon visuals are inspired by modern children's illustration books. It’s perennially starry black background gives the saturated greens, blues, purples, and gold of the artwork a mysterious dream-like quality. Goodnight Molly wants to play the magic and danger of fairy tales straight.

In contrast, the writing ranges from ‘thee,’ and ‘thou’ to modern slang and the child's attempts at articulation. The modern characters and the original fairy tale are in conversation with each other and affect each other depending on the user's choices. Whether it's the babysitter contriving a joke ending for the story or the child absorbing the darker elements in her own way.

The interface is inspired by PHQ’s 'Inter Yeti' project and Shoebridge and Simon's 'Welcome to Pine Point.' While it was initially inspired by hypertext and visual novel conventions, the UI now draws from conventional web icons for recognizability and usability.

The project measured its success by how the target 18–25-year-old audience reacted, with user testing and by releasing it online. Reactions in both spaces showed users were interested and invested in the story. Their narrative preference for darker stories, appreciation for humor, and relatability to the sitter helped the story speak to them. They wanted to make a story that helped the characters of two generations connect.