While, in itself, the narrative of Noirscape is to be interpreted at will by it’s participants, the structure of the environment in which the experience will take place will of course provide the underlying props and backstory along with the opportunity for interactivity with these props, people and different types of spaces – fictional, semi-fictional and realworld.
To help anchor my own understanding of the interactive aspect I have put together a flowchart to represent a snapshot of the app’s experience flow. This diagram illustrates how the narrative interactivity moves between levels of fiction, semi-fiction and realworld spaces while providing the participant with the props, events and actions that make the app ‘playable’.
While this diagram only illustrates a section of the app’s world it would represent a satisfactory achievement if I am able to build the functionality over the next four to six weeks. From then on I would be able to focus on adding new interactive items, 360 events and so on. The functionality to power the above snapshot is to be fed by cloud based data; hence I am able to add new elements on-the-fly; without having to bake them into the app itself and have many releases.
Found Objects
A common theme throughout the experience is the aquisition of Noirscape objects. These objects can be found in the Augmented Reality (AR) part of the app, the immersive 360 world as well as outside in the local town.
The objects will each have their own unique properties and actions. Actions represent what a participant can do with each item. For example, as per the flow chart, the participant will experience the old fashioned realsized doorway appear in their own home within the AR part of the app. They will learn that the door is locked as each item has a description. A common action in choose your own adventure is ‘examine‘. The participant may examine the door. The door object will be pre-configured to possess this ‘examinability‘ quality along with a consequence of carrying out the action. In the case of the door, the participant will find a keyhole as a consequence of the examine action. At some point they will surely find a key with which to ‘open‘ the door. Until they find the key, though, it remains shut. The keyhole is also treated as an interactive object which the participant has found. Albeit, it cannot be removed from the door, which is the parent object. However, the participant can ‘look through‘ the keyhole and this will reveal a keyhole view of a fictional space on the other side of the door.
This transitioning through nuances of fiction and reality is an important aspect to Noirscape and very much inspired by my research into the success of Bandersnatch but also the creative influence of other filmmakers and indeed videogame makers and thinkers who are keen to explore and expoit these blurred bounderies.
Refs/Resources
Text Adventure Game Design in 2020, Chris Ainsley
https://medium.com/@model_train/text-adventure-game-design-in-2020-608528ac8bda