Smedresmania! » Interactive Narrative

Le Livre Secret des Buttes Chaumont

Gabe — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:16:47 +0000

Join a crafty expatriate as he searches pre-Napoleonic Italy for the fabled Library of the Tiburtine Sybil, said to inform any reader of his own future. Hostile French and Austrian soldiers are closing in on the library, hidden underneath the temple atop Paris’s Parc des Buttes Chaumont. In your quest to find it first, you will face harrowing fights, encounter trying moral dilemmas, and perhaps even meet Napoleon himself.

“Le Livre Secret des Buttes Chaumont” is an interactive short story situated within Paris’s Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Every plot point in the fictional adventure, set in Rome and Tivoli, corresponds to an actual location within the park. The way you choose to navigate the story will guide you on a unique path through the park’s phantasmagorical landscapes.

The colors on the map roughly correspond to the locales in the story.
Gold: Rome Train Station / Ave. de la Cascade, Southeastern Park
Brown: Rome / Eastern Park
Blue: Tivoli / Northeastern Park
Green: Tivoli Forest / Lac des Buttes Chaumont
Red: Temple of the Tiburtine Sybil / Butte Chaumont

To start, click on book #1 (golden).
View Le Livre Secret des Buttes Chaumont in a larger map

Book icon designed by Navdeep Raj (http://dezinerfolio.com)
Translated by Annaig Combe and Daniel Levin Becker

Mansion of Crossed Destinies

Gabe — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:33:29 +0000

A two player cooperative game where one player, in the role of Sarah Winchester in the early 1900s, built what would become the Winchester Mystery House, while another player encounters ghosts in the house a hundred years later.

In 1884, Sarah Winchester, haunted by the victims of her family’s rifles, was cursed to build a house for the rest of her life. The whole family died shortly thereafter. But one hundred years later, a tarot dealer is told that to bring the girl he was destined to love into existence, he must rewrite the family’s past, saving Winchester and her descendents from their untimely fates. One builds a house, the other weaves a story. They meet in The Mansion of Crossed Destinies, a cooperative two-player game where you build your level as you play in it.

Two players share the same screen; one uses the keyboard, the other uses the mouse (one player can play, but shouldn’t expect to do so well!). Mrs. Winchester, in the past, carefully directs her squad of builders in the construction of the house, at the pleasure of the occupying spirits. If she ever stops building, she dies, and both players lose.

The other player plays in that house as it would look if Winchester lived to the present day — a constantly changing extrapolation. This player must find the ghosts of the Winchester family, and, using a special deck of tarot cards, help them avoid their untimely deaths in the past. By doing so, he allows them to continue building the house, and ensures that Mrs. Winchester can evade her curse.

Both players win if the Winchester family survives to 2006, when the future player will find his true love alive and well, and Mrs. Winchester will be relieved of her curse.

Castro Catastrophe

Gabe — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:29:11 +0000

While I was working at The Go Game I wrote a historical narrative game — a cross between participatory theater, role-playing, and an adventure game — inspired by the history of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. I ran the three-hour game twice, with about 25 players each time. Players played as supporters, and walked around the game zone centered on Castro Street, earning the endorsements of several actors playing the roles of Harvey’s friends and competitors. Local bookstores, drugstores, and the Castro Theater were all in on the game and helped provide clues.