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Random House to Launch New Narrative Fiction Game – Black Crown

blackcrown[1]Random House is teasing us today about a new narrative fiction game game that they plan to launch in May.

Few details are available at the moment, but I do know that Random House UK (and not the US branch) is working with Failbetter Games and Popleaf to adapt the former’s StoryNexus platform for a new game set in a post-apocalyptic world.

Black Crown will be a narrative fiction type of game, and based on the screen shots from other games running on the StoryNexus platform I would bet that the game play will be similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, only with more depth to the story. I can also see a hint of some resemblance to the Versu text-based game platform from Linden Labs. That platform launched a couple months ago, and currently is available only on the iPad.

xscreen-shot-2013-04-14-at-10.jpg.pagespeed.ic.ZpCJFOIfr1[1]Popleaf is reportedly developing content for the game. It’s not clear what that means, exactly, but I see from their website that this developer has previously created literary and book-related games including an adaptation of  A Clockwork Orange.

The Bookseller reported on this story earlier today but I cannot find that article. All I know at this point is what I can see with my own eyes as well as the background details I have dug up.

I’ve played around with the website for a few minutes and was briefly entertained by the registration process and the 5 questions that were asked. If the rest of the game is as well written then it could be interesting.

From what I can tell, Random House UK is being close-mouthed about the story line for the game, and I cannot see that they have named the author(s) either. All will hopefully be revealed in May.

Queries to Random House UK have gone unanswered. To be fair, the London Book Fair kicked off yesterday so they are probably a little busy.

Black Crown

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