Previews!

We've been working hard to get 80 Days ready for release, doing the final polish to the art, fixing all the little bugs in the interface, entirely rewriting a few major game systems that we're realised could be a bit better and adding even more cool extra routes, side-alleys, characters and secrets into the text...

...but along the way, we found the time - and the courage! - to send a preview off to some of our favourite reviewers and websites. We've been biting our nails to see what they think but first posts have now gone live.

First up, there's Pocket Tactics:

There is nothing safe or timid about Inkle’s next game 80 Days, coming to iOS this summer. It’s not even content to pick up the bar from Sorcery! and raise it a little further — it stuffs the bar into a cannon and shoots it at the moon... Even in the pre-release state in which I’ve seen it, 80 Days is one of the most extraordinarily memorable and unique games I’ve played in years.

Then we did a long, in-depth interview with the guys at AppsZoom, discussing everything from how to manage a story with half a million words and ten thousand choices, to the process of decolonizing a Victorian text and make a diverse world.

80 Days jumps off the basic platform of the Jules Verne classic and into a steampunk retrofuture imagined from the perspective of mid-1800s technophile adventurists... 80 Days is innovative and extraordinary. It’s also unpredictable fun.

We covered a bit more about the steampunk-inspired look and feel in an interview with 148 Apps:

Inkle’s new interactive story set to be its best yet

And Pocket Gamer covered some of the aspects of how the game plays in depth:

Calling it a gamebook feels a little disingenuous. This is something more than a Choose Your Own Adventure, with each avenue you take changing the narrative in some subtle way.

We've still got a lot of polishing left to do but you can expect to get your hands on a copy of 80 Days this summer. Are you ready to go on a journey?