Frankenstein in the press
Our beloved monster, Frankenstein, is ready. Dave has finished stitching together his capillaries and arteries, and we've finished buffing his skin. Right now, he's curled up in his vat in the corner of the room, listening to everything we say, waiting, ready to be awoken by the spark of life that is the Apple approval process. We've sent out our betas and invited our previewers. And pleasingly, we've started to see his name appear here and there.
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The first time was quite a surprise: in Erica Wagner's column for the Saturday Times. She writes (almost quoting an inkle talk on how the passive/interactive distinction is a fallacy):
"What is it that lets you choose the pace of a story? What takes characters, horrors, plot and puts them into the hands of a new creator - you? That's right. It's a novel... The pictures in our minds can never be surpassed by those on a screen."Over at inkle, we couldn't agree more - and Dave has said much the same on his blog, too. Books are great. They're brilliant. And what we hope we've done with Frankenstein and with the inklebook platform in general is take everything that's good about books - including reading, and text, and illustrations instead of graphics - added a little game-inspired magic-dust - and made something that isn't new, and isn't better... but it is good.
The second press clip we knew about: our friends at SFX Magazine did a write-up based on a very early build indeed. The story in the news section, snappily titled "iMonster: The modern Prometheus gets even more modern", outlines the project, with quotes from Dave and Jon, discussing the story design and experience design respectively. Once the thing is out, who know, we might even get a review - if they can work out whether we fit under "books" or "games" that is... (I could tell them, but that would be cheating.)
While we're talking about press clippings, we should also point out that the inklewriter got a mention in the Yorkshire Times, too. More on that side of things very, very soon...