<em>Author’s note: <a title="The Portal: Aotearoa by Matt Wigdahl" href="http://sffportal.net/2011/03/aotearoa-by-matt-wigdahl/">This article</a> originally appeared on March 4, 2011, in <a title="The Portal" href="http://www.sffportal.net/">The Portal</a>, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy literary reviews.</em>

<img class="alignleft" title="Aotearoa" src="/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/aotearoa.jpg" alt="Aotearoa" width="150" height="150" />The winners of the <a title="XYZZY Awards" href="http://xyzzyawards.org/">XYZZY awards</a>, the Interactive Fiction community’s answer to the <a title="Grammy Awards" href="http://www.grammy.com/">Grammys</a> and <a title="Oscar Awards" href="http://oscar.go.com/">Oscars</a>, have been announced. A plethora of science fiction and fantasy titles are among the award recipients, chief among them <a title="Matt Wigdahl" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/showuser?id=9y7pa3x5vi1fzi5e">Matt Wigdahl</a>‘s “<a title="Aotearoa" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgemhttp://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem">Aotearoa</a>“, a speculative fiction piece which also won the <a title="IFComp 2010" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/">Interactive Fiction Competition</a> last year. “Aotearoa” swept the awards, winning in no less than seven  of the thirteen categories, including Best Game, Best Setting, Best  Puzzles, Best NPCs, Best Individual Puzzle, Best Implementation, and  Best Use of Innovation. Clearly, the game has a lot going for it,  especially for a work of short IF, though its length teeters on the edge  of our definition: It will take average players two hours to complete  this game, if not a little more.

“Aotearoa” follows the adventurers of 12-year-old Tim Cooper, a denizen  of an alternate Earth where the microcontinent of Zealandia did not sink  beneath the ocean. Instead of the New Zealand we know today, the  landmass of Aotearoa formed, harboring climate and geographical elements  that permitted a few species of dinosaurs to survive the <a title="Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event">K-T extinction</a>.  In the modern era, when we meet Tim, man and beast coincide on the  island in relative harmony through the efforts of the joint  British/Māori government’s effective conservancy policies. Tim has been  selected by the Aotearoa Conservation Service to participate in their  Junior Fieldwork Program. While en route to join up with others, Tim and  his Māori guide, Eruera, find themselves in the sights of profiteers  who, in the tradition of ivory hunters, wish to poach the dinosaurs. The  poacher’s destroy Tim’s boat, leaving him and an injured Eruera  stranded on a remote beach. It’s up to the player to guide Tim as he  seeks to return to civilization.

It’s evident that a great deal of thought and research went into  crafting the game’s alternate history. In addition to the information  that the player learns within the game itself, Wigdahl includes a number  of appendices containing geographical and historical information about  our own New Zealand and its “Aotearoa” counterpart. However, it’s not  the information alone that earned the game its Best Setting award; it’s  the way the setting is realistically brought to life. Wigdahl takes full  advantage of his alternate time line, bringing species other than the  dinosaurs back from extinction, and creating at least one species that  conceivably might-have-been. And it’s the behavior of these imaginative  creations that cements us in this new reality and earned the game its  Best NPCs award. Showmanship, mating dances, and mimicry abound–in  essence, these animals act like we might expect them to act were we to  discover them in our own world. These interactions also serve as the key  elements to solving many of the game’s puzzles.

As with the physical setting, Wigdahl takes as much care to implement  the cultural and spiritual background of the island. Like the New  Zealand of our world, Aotearoa is populated by the Polynesian ancestors  of the tribal Māori, and thus their heritage suffuses both island and  game. The introduction opens with a dream about Māui, the Māori  trickster, bringing the island into existence; Eruera, his speech  studded with Māori words, assists the player with additional tales; and  finally, a glossary of the Māori language is included among the  appendices.

Wigdahl’s weaving of these settings, both physical and spiritual,  into Tim’s personal journey makes this a solid piece of  character-oriented fiction. We first meet Tim as a timid boy, certainly  excited to have an opportunity to see dinosaurs, yet feeling alone and  afraid in foreign surroundings. He’s not unfamiliar with being alone and  afraid–we soon discover he’s an orphan, his parents the victim of a  horrible accident. Although Tim’s tragic history doesn’t necessarily  serve as the obstacle he must overcome, his lack of family suggests he’s  more alone than many people, and establishes his need to connect with  someone. It turns out this someone is the human, animal, and spiritual  inhabitants of the island with whom Tim collaborates to outwit the  poachers.

The bond between a white male and non-white, indigenous natives inevitably brings up comparisons to the <a title="The Messiah Complex" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/opinion/08brooks.html">‘White Messiah’ fable</a>,  wherein a white man finds spiritual fulfillment among a ‘race’  typically oppressed by white men. This oppression is usually sustained  by superior technology, though the ‘natives ‘seem to have a superior  sense of how all beings and their surroundings interrelate (another  familiar trope, that of the ‘<a title="Wikipedia: Noble Savage" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage">Noble Savage</a>‘).  Embraced by the ‘natives’ and exiled by his own kin, the protagonist  leads his new brotherhood to victory against his oppressive family. It’s  a popular, if controversial staple of science fiction and fantasy. <em><a title="Avatar" href="http://www.avatarmovie.com/">Avatar</a></em>, <em><a title="Dune" href="http://www.dunenovels.com/">Dune</a></em>, even portions of <em><a title="The Wheel of Time" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time">The Wheel of Time</a></em>, herald the exploits of the ‘White Messiah.’

To be certain there is a dash of the ‘White Messiah’ fable within “Aotearoa”, enough to warrant comment from <a title="Emily Short: IF Comp 2010: Aotearoa" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/if-comp-2010-aotearoa/">several</a> <a title="Sarah Morayati: IF Comp 2010: Aotearoa" href="http://www.sarahmorayati.com/2010/11/aotearoa/">reviewers</a>, <a title="Yoo Ha Lee's review" href="http://yhlee.dreamwidth.org/1107205.html">one of whom</a> actually downgraded her rating of the game because it shares some elements of the trope. But unlike <em>Avatar</em> and <em>Dune</em>,  the ‘White Messiah’ fable isn’t the point of “Aotearoa”, and many  crucial elements of the fable are missing: It’s evident that the island  and the inhabitants can and will survive without Tim (the poachers are a  mere inconvenience, at best), Tim hasn’t been exiled by anyone, and he  isn’t on his way to becoming the Māui’s leader. Tim is simply a  12-year-old boy who happens to stumble into an adventure that many  12-year-old boys would appreciate: A chance to explore a fantastical  island inhabited by dinosaurs.