Like many other Netflix users I thoroughly enjoyed Black Mirror’s interactive adventure episode Bandersnatch, captivated by the mix of Charlie Brooker’s dark narratives and the misleading sense of control of each decision you make. Even the choice of Frosties and Sugar Puffs seems insidious in a world where every action has a consequence where you create your own adventure with the limited options given.

Choose your own adventure story books such as the Goosebumps novels consumed much of my childhood with each story formatted so that after a couple of pages of reading, the protagonist faces two or three options, each of which leads to more options, and then to one of many endings following examples from as early as 1979. The original “classic” CYOA series contained 184 titles authored by 30 different writers. The books were set in locations around the globe, in outer space, under the sea and in a number of distinctly imagined fantasy worlds which soon found their way on to PC via early text based adventure games in which you could create your own narrative. Text adventures convey the game’s story through passages of text, revealed to the player in response to typed instructions, many using a simple verb-noun parser to interpret these instructions, allowing the player to interact with objects at a basic level, for example by typing “get key”. These choices would affect your game play and give access to new story lines and quests. In modern games we have seen huge progress in the development of video games and technology, allowing branching narratives to exist in a variety of formats: episodic graphic adventure games.

Choose your own adventure graphic game can witnessed in successful modern examples such as Heavy Rain, Life is Strange and Telltale’s Wolf Among Us in which your choices directly affect the narrative, character interactions and lead to unique endings.

Due to my appreciation and rich history of the format, I felt inspired to recreate such a style for an interesting subject matter, whilst still mixing film footage to give a sense of reality and choices that affect game play. Despite my great ambitions I have no prior experience using game engines.

Last semester I chose script writing as my media discipline, allowing me to expand my knowledge of writing captivating narratives that keeps the reader hooked although in the context of writing for TV, concepts were often limited to a linear structure. It helped me understand that narrative writing is extremely broad across all branches of the industry – why not learn to implement my skills into a playable, interactive game and expand my horizons?

An interesting perspective I feel is a playable situation in which the character does not have free choice or could impact their decisions in reality.

Ideas for game topics that demonstrate the concept of hopelessness or lack of control:
Climate Change – Preventing Global Disaster
Animal Agriculture – Cruelty of factory farming
Refugee Crisis – A mission to safety
Domestic Abuse-Trapped by a partner