Playable Readings: feel Kafka, don't just read him
Two of Franz Kafka's parables, Before the Law and An Imperial Message,
turned into games that a class can play in one period.
This project has one aim: that students should feel Kafka instead of only
reading him. A theme that is memorised stays on the page. A theme that is
lived stays in the person.
Developed by Vikas Goyanka, LLB26057, National Law University, Delhi, in
honour of Prof. (Dr.) Prasannanshu, whose teaching asks students to answer a
work of literature by making something of their own.
What is here
| Path | What it is |
|---|
dist/ | The finished site: the home page (games first), the teachers' page, the acknowledgements, four game pages, and the files search engines and AI assistants read. Committed already built |
before-the-law.html, imperial-message.html | The two text-only games, written by hand. Each also holds its game's prose, in a block called T, which the 3D builds read |
src/, src/im/ | Source of the two 3D games (three.js) |
tools/ | Build scripts, the headless tests, and publish.mjs, which puts dist/ on the gh-pages branch that GitHub Pages serves |
assets/ | Textures, narration, prepared 3D models, the portrait, share-preview images, and LICENSES.md |
docs/ | Design notes for An Imperial Message |
Building
Everything runs from tools/, with Node 20 or newer.
cd tools
npm install
node build-3d.mjs # Before the Law -> ../before-the-law-3d.html
node build-im.mjs # An Imperial Message -> ../imperial-message-3d.html
node package.mjs # assembles ../dist
node publish.mjs # puts ../dist on the gh-pages branch, which GitHub Pages serves
Other steps, needed only when their inputs change:
| Command | When |
|---|
node make-voice.mjs / node make-voice.mjs im | After changing any spoken line. Generates the narration |
node prep-models.mjs / node prep-models.mjs im | After changing a 3D model |
node prep-portrait.mjs <image> | To replace the portrait on the acknowledgements page |
node make-social.mjs | After changing the portrait or the share-preview wording |
If the site's address changes, set SITE in tools/site.mjs and run
node package.mjs again: the share previews, sitemap, robots.txt and
llms.txt all carry the full address.
Testing
The tests drive the real pages in a headless browser.
| Command | What it checks |
|---|
node play.mjs | A full playthrough of Before the Law in 3D. About ten minutes |
node play-im.mjs | A full playthrough of An Imperial Message in 3D. About ten minutes |
node play-btl-text.mjs, node play-im-text.mjs | Full playthroughs of the two text-only games |
node verify-dist.mjs | Every page in dist/ loads with no errors and no network requests |
node shoot-hub.mjs | The home page and the acknowledgements page, at desktop, laptop and phone width |
node shoot-thanks.mjs | The acknowledgement on each game's end screen |
node shoot-board.mjs | Classroom-board mode at 1920x1080, by touch alone |
Rules the project keeps
- Each game is one file. Everything is inlined, so a game page opens by
double-click from a folder and makes no network requests.
- Kafka's text lives in one place per game: the
T block of the
hand-written HTML file. The *.gen.js files are generated; do not edit them.
- In Before the Law, Enter is always the last choice and never disabled.
- In An Imperial Message, Run is always in the same place and always
works, and the message is never written anywhere.
- Nothing a student writes leaves their device.
Licences
assets/LICENSES.md is the full record. The code, prose,
sound and narration are original work; three.js and howler.js are MIT. Two
things are not free to reuse and are marked there: the portrait on the
acknowledgements page, and the character models in An Imperial Message, which were made with
AI modelling tools whose terms depend on the plan they were made under.
