Most games have some amount of text in them: it’s the simplest way to tell a story, after all. Some games, however, have a little bit of fun with their use of the written word.
Here are three tongue-in-cheek, free games that you can play right now to get a quasi-literary fix.
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Length: 2-3 hours
Platform: iOS
Created by Simogo
Print used to be literature’s default medium: if you wanted to read something, you went to a bookstore or library and bought a printed book. Now, with mobile apps like Device 6 – part fiction, part puzzle game – literature is suddenly opening up new frontiers.
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By the iClassics Collection
Length: Approx. 1 hour
Platform: iOS and Android
Price: $2.99
iClassics has released a new digital fiction piece just in time for Halloween. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, adapted from Washington Irving’s 19th century story, retells the classic tale while giving it an interactive twist.
Like in iClassics’ other work, the app is a playful digital anachronism, a hybrid text that straddles two vastly different eras without standing squarely in either one (this is a good thing).
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Poetry, in the popular imagination, is usually seen as a solo act. The lone poet bares their soul to the world, writes beautiful tortured lines, etc.
When it comes to electric literature, though, what happens a computer algorithm is thrown into the creative process?
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Length: Series, Updated every Friday
Platforms: Mobile and Desktop
Price: Free
Dents is a sleekly produced, post-apocalyptic series about outcasts with supernatural powers, a la The X-Men. With memorable characters, a solid story, and an emotive soundtrack, it’s a great web comic and a prime example of digital storytelling.
The story follows Eleanor, a 14-year-old girl living in a dystopian vision of the future…
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What is electronic literature, you ask? Answers can be hard to come by, if not impossible. In e-lit artist Nick Montfort’s words, “a fluent answer means you’re lying.”
Whatever its definition may be, the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) presented a sampling of electronic works at The Kitchen earlier this month; the lineup was particularly diverse.
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Length: Approx. 30 Minutes
Platforms: Desktop – PC and Mac
Price: Free
The House Abandon is a work of interactive fiction within a work of interactive fiction. The game itself exists inside another game, and this border between these two worlds is manipulated and twisted to provide a novel interactive “creepypasta” experience.
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Length: Approx. 10 Minutes
Devices: Browser-Based
Price: Free
The Shootout is a short story that takes tropes of the Western genre and spins them into a work that merges a romanticized past with today’s digital culture. Its graphics and audio walk that line as well, manipulating conventional imagery and sound using overtly digital methods.
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Length: Approx. 10 minutes per playthrough
Devices: Browser-Based
Price: Free, with suggested donation
Depression Quest is an award-winning browser-based work that puts you in the position of someone suffering from depression. While at heart a conventional “choose-your-own-adventure” story, this piece is powerful in how it emulates the disorder; by hindering your ability to make certain choices, it illustrates how a depressed person’s mental state can fluctuate, moving towards hope or despair.
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Length: Approx. 15 Minutes
Devices: Browser-Based
Cost: Free
After the Storm is an interactive, non-fiction work that chronicles one man’s survival of a natural disaster. By blending personal narrative and documentary evidence, it tells the story of both a storm’s immediate aftermath and its lingering traumas.
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