There's been some buzz around interactive stories in the last week, with the launch of the reading-beta of Varytale, the early buzz for Failbetter's StoryNexus platform, and our own inklewriter all hitting the internet within the space of about 48 hours. (And Choice of Games have been accepting new stories for a while now.) It looks a bit like new authors will soon be spoiled for choice. So which way should they go?

The answer is, of course, it depends. Each system has its own system, and each system affords a certain kind of design and a certain kind of storytelling. On the Failbetter blog, Alexis Kennedy has suggested that "StoryNexus is more game-y; Varytale is more book-y", but both are built around the basic idea of "storylets" - little chunks of narrative that are dealt out under certain conditions, like cards in a deck or the flip-flopping chapters of a book like Game of Thrones.

Yesterday we finally hit the big red Go! button on inklewriter, our web-based tool for writing, play-testing and sharing interactive stories. We've been working on this for a few months now and been through a few iterations, from our earliest sketches on a coffee-shop notepad to the final version, which is now ready for you to try. So what are you waiting for?

Down Among the Dead Men skin design continues.

We're starting to develop our visual design pillars. In particular, we're trying to move away from illustrations for this one, and more towards real objects to represent the events and locations in the story. So, where there would've been an anatomical drawing in Frankenstein, here we have a real skull buried in the sand.

We're also really keen to push more vibrant colours into the design of Down Among the Dead Men. Expect more treasure in future images! Yaaaar.

As the design matures, we start to lay out the elements horizontally as they would actually be in the final inklebook. This starts to give us a feeling of the flow and hierarchy. Clearly, there's still a lot of work to be done here - the map doesn't quite make sense in this particular layout. 

Although you could certainly imagine an inklebook where you travel from location to location and chapter to chapter by choosing points on a map! The structure of Dead Men's story could perhaps lend itself to that... but either way, we love old maps, and we'll be sure to slot them in somewhere!

Remember, if you'd like to contribute to our design process on this, you can get involved via our Pinterest board.

With Frankenstein out of the door, we're now looking ahead to our next inklebook. Again, we're collaborating with Dave Morris, this time on the swashbuckling adventure story Down Among the Dead Men.

Developing a visual metaphor

So, for Down Among the Dead Men, we've started with the scene of being washed up on a tropical beach, along with a set of piratey paraphernalia. We're still developing the exact metaphor - what should the front "cover" look like? Should it be a book cover, a page, or something else entirely?

We're also keen to differentiate the visual style from Frankenstein. While the material aesthetic is inkle's trademark, we want to make Down Among the Dead Men brighter, and communicate more of the gamey elements in the text. For Frankenstein, it was easy to lean on the beauty of the anatomical illustrations. For Down Among the Dead Men, we'll have to find a new touchstone.

We'll post more images as we develop the visual skin further, but see what you think about this initial concept. Also, bear in mind that this is purely a first draft, so the polish and finesse will improve dramatically over the coming days and weeks!

Help us out!

A great review went up at The Chimerist today, intelligent and thoughtful. Here's the opening quote:

Whatever interactive fiction is (and we’re still figuring that out) it suffers from all the problems of traditional fiction and then some. The vast majority of novels and short stories aren’t much good, but when a branching fiction — along the lines of the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” children’s books — fails to engage, the first impulse is to blame the form rather than the content. Let “Frankenstein,” just released by Inkle Studios and Profile Books, serve as a reproach to that reflex. The app is a creative, subtle and sensitive adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novella, and it has singlehandedly renewed this critic’s hopes for interactive fiction.

There's enormous intelligence behind the reworking.
-- Dale Townshend, quoted in The Independent

Frankenstein, by Dave Morris and published by Profile Books, has gone live on the App Store today.

Superb
-- Tim Harford, senior columnist for The Financial Times

Update: We've had another national newspaper review, this time under the title "The app that's a monster hit", in The Independent.

First up, a detailed interview with Good E-Reader, in which I discuss inkle and interactive apps, and Dave talks adapting the story of Frankenstein.

Then there's a (slightly unexpected, but most welcome) half-review half-discussion of the Apple/DOJ court-case by Porter Anderson, as illustrated by inkle.

There seem to be a lot of articles around right now about book-apps. Are they the future? Or are they hurting our ability to imagine? Are they more immersive? Or are they an interesting sideline but no mainstream? Reading these articles, and their comments, reveals a definite schism in viewpoint, between those who are excited - perhaps too excited - by a digital future of video and audio-rich content; and those for whom reading is a precious, fragile thing that we cannot afford to lose.

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.

We're hugely excited to be able to announce that inkle will be teaming up with UK games' legend, Ian Livingstone, at the Games Britannia festival this July. Games Britannia is a week-long festival of workshops, talks and competitions aimed at getting schoolchildren interested in videogames and we're going to be there with inklewriter helping kids turn Ian's classic Fighting Fantasy book The Warlock of Firetop Mountain into slick and modern interactive fiction.