80 Days

In January we posted this teaser:

Now it's time to reveal our hand.

Announcing: 80 DAYS

Adapted from Jules Verne's classic novel, Around the World in 80 Days, our latest interactive adventure will put you in the role of long-suffering servant Jean Passepartout, plotting a route to circumnavigate the globe as fast as possible, avoiding misfortunes, pirates and policeman along the way.

Using the same inklewriter technology that powers our 100k+ selling Sorcery! series, and built from the same 3D-based engine used in that game, 80 Days is part interactive fiction, part globe-based board-game, part Rogue-like. Mixing authored and procedurally generated content, each play-through is different, with new routes and new opportunities for short-cuts - and for disaster.

There's lots more to say about 80 Days and the unique world we've created for this adventure, that we'll be posting about over the next few months as we approach release.

About the author

The idea for 80 Days has been knocking around the inkle office for some time now, but until last year we didn't have the right person to help us make it. We knew we needed a writer who could handle a massive amount of research, but who also had a flair for the fantastical, and who could capture the right mixture of whimsy and drama. Then we played Samsara, and we knew we'd found our author.

That author is Meg Jayanth, who's previously worked for BBC games and Six to Start. 80 Days is her first publisher-backed writing project - and a demanding one at that: at 200,000 words and counting, the game encompasses over two hundred locations and all the trains, balloon, steamers, carriages, elephants, camels, paddle-boats, yachts, fishing vessels, dirigibles that run between them...

One last thing...

But being an inkle game, we wanted to go one step further, and try to make something that represents the next step in interactive fiction. That's why we're taking the game out of your device and into the real world. Using geo-location, the game will be played in real-time and on a 1:1 scale. We believe by bringing the game into reality we will make something truly, unspeakably immersive.

Okay - so we're not doing geo-location, and you won't have to walk the whole way round the world to see the full story. But we do have a trick or two up our sleeve that we won't reveal on April 1st.

Watch this space.