Gritty adventure on the final frontier

If you've read Heart of Ice, you'll know I like my science fiction grim, dark and with no unequivocally happy endings. Actually, for the most part I like my fantasy that way too, but good SF demands an uncaring universe. In fantasy you can be saved by a mysterious prophecy and a saviour. In (too) many fantasy stories, if things look tough, having the right moral code deep down inside can count for just as much as knowing how to wield a sword or weave an intrigue.

But not in the best SF. That's the tale of mankind confronting a vast, awesome, bleak infinity that both terrifies and calls to us. For the brutal collision between guts and survival I'm talking about Apollo 13 or The Martian, for sheer wonder try Europa Report or Rendezvous With Rama, and for the great and terrible unknown take a look at Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three.

Now there's a new title to add to that list: Kyle B Stiff's Heavy Metal Thunder, released last week for iPad and iPhone by gamebook app developers Cubus Games. The art and sound effects are very stylish indeed, building extra layers of eeriness and menace into the story, which was originally published as a regular prose gamebook for Kindle. Humanity reached its golden age, only to have it all snatched away by alien invaders. The sola system is overrun. You have your wits and your courage. That may not sound like much, but it's what got us out of the caves and up into space in the first place. Now it's time to show those aliens the hard downside of picking a fight with the human race.

Even if SF isn't your thing, there's still a point to all this. Fabled Lands LLP have been talking to the guys at Cubus Games about some pretty exciting projects. (Yes, we have apps in the works with Tin Man Games and Inkle, but we have so many gamebooks that one or even two developers could never handle the workload. And on top of that, we like making new friends.) The plans with Cubus are very hush-hush for now, but you know me. Give it a few weeks and I'll be spilling the beans.

Before all that, though, come back Friday when I'll have the second part of the "DVD extras" for Doomwalk. See ya then.

Spirit Slayer

Megara Entertainment's new app Spirit Slayer goes on sale today. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but from the look of the screens I think it will appeal to both CRPG players and gamebook fans. Mikaël Louys had this to say:

"Spirit Slayer is a co-production by Megara Entertainment and game designer and author Paul Blanchot. Art is by Mary Nikol and music by Faiz Nabheebucus. It's a sort of reflexes game mixed with elements of RPG, and is available in both French and English (translated by Paul Gresty)." 

If anybody has tried it, why not tell us in the comments what you thought? I bet we all have spirits we'd love to slay.

Apple's Halloween picks

I don't particularly regard Frankenstein as a horror story myself, or even science fiction, distrusting as I do the facile taxonomy of genre labels. At the same time, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and still less a gift kelpie, so the fact that Apple have chosen my interactive Frankenstein novel as one of their Halloween picks on iTunes is surely cause to rattle dem bones in celebration. And as an extra fillip, I just heard that FutureBook has shortlisted it for their 2012 Innovation Awards. Oh, the dizzying brew of critical acclaim, even here in the humble vestibule of fame that is British digital publishing.

Frankenstein was launched as an iOS-only app in April - much to the ire of many who chose a digital path other than the one marked out by Apple. If your e-reader of choice is Android-based, or a Kindle, you won't have long to wait for the ebook versions. They'll be released too late for Halloween, but after all Christmas Eve is also a time for spooky stories.

And in any case, Frankenstein is more a tragedy or even a thriller than it is a horror tale - if we have to pigeon-hole it - and it's a story that is powerfully compelling whatever the season. Here's a little taste:

* * *

It isn’t hard to track the official. He leaves heading north and you find his horse at the first inn on that road. Hidden in the hedge, you wait until the last drinker staggers out and the lights are put out. Creeping up to the window, you see his two guards stretched out on wooden pallets in the common room. With the aid of an apple tree you climb up to the next floor and look in. The first room has two figures – the innkeeper and his wife, probably. In the next window, you see the official's floppy red cap.

The catch yields to the pressure of your hand. You ease yourself into the room. In the bed lies the man you seek. You hear his breathing change, sense the stiffening of his body.

‘You’re awake,’ you say to him. ‘Don’t try to cry out.’

‘Who are you?’ He is trying to speak loudly, you think, both to assert himself and to rouse his guards. But fear has made his voice a dry whisper.

‘Today you threatened friends of mine.’

‘The De Lacys?’ He sits up, reaches for a taper beside him.

* * *

Where's this scene going, do you think? Towards a calm discussion à la Voltaire's salon, or into the gory excesses of the Grand Guignol? The monster's moral development is entirely in your hands.

Not so black and white

I've just done an interview for the Exeter University student newspaper, Exeposé, in which I talk about interactive fiction, games, comics and future projects.

The main focus is my recent reworking of Frankenstein as a (sort of) gamebook. That's still available in the App Store but, if iOS isn't the apple of your eye, it's not long now before we'll be releasing the epub3 and Kindle versions. These have been coded by Spirit Entertainment, the developers of the new FL apps.

Here is the moment when the monster, having spent a whole year hidden in an outhouse adjoining the home of the De Lacy family, tries out the clothing he has made himself in preparation for finally meeting them:

You hang around the border of the woods at daybreak until you see a man with a scythe walking on the far side of the field. He is a long way off. Stepping out from the trees, you raise your hand in greeting. 

And he waves back. He waves. A simple gesture that men make to each other every day. It means more to you than anything you can remember. Your heart is pounding in elation as you turn back into the enveloping comfort of the woods.

So where was I? Oh yes, the interview was conducted by Tom Bond and Emily Lunn, Exeposé's books editors, and you can read it here. Just below the interview, there's also a review of the app (or ebook as we must soon call it) which gives a thumbs up - though here's yet another reviewer with a knee-jerk dislike of Victor Frankenstein. Where are people ingesting this dogma? The story of Frankenstein and his monster is much more interesting than simple good guy/bad guy. Victor is irresponsible, yes, and that's tackled at several points in my version, particularly in the dinner conversation with Professor Waldman. But the monster does murder three innocent people in Mary Shelley's novel - and may or may not murder up to four people in my version, depending on the level of alienation you encourage. The tragedy is that Victor and the monster destroy each other, emotionally, morally and at last literally. You want a simple good versus evil story, read Dracula.

I'm yakking away on pages 23-24, but there's plenty of other good stuff in there worth a look, including an interview with Peter Molyneux about his new company 22Cans. Curious? You will be.

Frankenstein web demo

After all the recent posts about the writing of my interactive Frankenstein book app, you may like to try it out. And now you don't even need an iPad or iPhone, as development wizards Inkle have put a Frankenstein web demo up on their site. Pop over and have a conversation with Victor about what he's got in that tank - just click where you see the words "Give it a try."

This demo is the sort of thing that publishers ought to be putting up on their websites too, incidentally, not just leaving to developers. But we're only in 2012. Softly, softly.

Meanwhile, if you are iOS-enabled then you can buy the book here.

Frankenstein's monster is on the loose

If you've been dropping in on this blog recently, you can hardly have missed the news about my reboot of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Is it an app? Well, yes, but "enhanced ebook" might be just as good a term. This is not a thing with sound effects and pop-up play with tricky lighting and swirling fonts. It's a book. A literary experience. You read it, interacting in a choose-your-own type way, only instead of picking which door to open or which dragon to fight, you're having a dialogue with Victor Frankenstein.

What's it like? You don't need to go by my opinion - here's what others have been saying:

"Stunning." - Tim Harford
"Very clever." - Professor John Sutherland
"Nicely done." - Stephen Fry
"A nuanced take on monstrosity... Extremely poignant." - Dr Dale Townshend

But why take their word for it? Anyone with $4.99 and an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch can see for themselves. And quite a few have already: it's at #2 in UK books and #13 in the USA today. You can get Frankenstein from the App Store in the UK here and US here.

Frankenstein book trailer

It's gone live! The Frankenstein trailer, beautifully put together by awesome design/code maestros Inkle Studios, is now on YouTube. And in less than a month you can buy the book itself - for iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. If you think you know "gamebooks", think again, 'cause this is a whole new species.

This Tin Man's got heart

Gamebooks are alive and thriving in 2011, as you can see from this dramatic trailer for Tin Man Games' upcoming iOS gamebook Catacombs of the Undercity, the fifth in their Gamebook Adventures series that began with An Assassin in Orlandes. The blurb ought to whet your appetite for some serious sword-n-sorcery action:

Captured by one of Orlandes City's most infamous brotherhoods, the Red Hand Guild, you are thrown to the mercy of the subterranean world deep beneath the streets of the great capital. Wading through the sewers and other dark menacing places, your goal is to reach Undercity, the City beneath the City. Only there can you find the help you need to escape this underground horror and bring down the dark brotherhood from within.

The author of Catacombs is none other than Andrew Wright, whose Fantasy Game Book blog keeps the interactive literature torch burning very bright. Want to know more? Of course you do - and the Tin Man Games blog will beam you up fast.

All together now

Hot news from Mikael Louys, the business and creative dynamo in charge of Megara Entertainment. The Fabled Lands HD game for iPad is at #24 in the App Store RPG charts! That ranking reflects the incredible hard work that Mikael and his team put into their adaptation - indeed, their spectacular reinvention - of The War-Torn Kingdom, which is a thing of beauty that Jamie and I never dreamed of when we originally wrote the FL books.

So here's the thing. If a game can get into the Top Ten then it bobs up onto everybody's radar and it's got a good chance of staying there. And if Fabled Lands HD can get there, with just a little push, that could mean thousands of new FL fans who will help sustain the wave of RPGs, CRPGs and gamebooks that has already begun.

I know what most of you are thinking: "But I don't own an iPad." Okay, well, apart from advising you to sell your wristwatch to buy one, I'm going to say that you can certainly reach out and influence somebody who does. If not in your immediate circle of friends, family and co-workers, how about on blogs where you're leaving a comment? Or failing that, just open the window and shout.

Mikael already has his team back in harness on Cities of Gold & Glory, for which I've seen some of the truly sumptuous artwork, and there's an iPhone conversion coming in the next few months too. Getting Fabled Lands HD into the Top Ten ranking in iTunes RPGs would be a great boost for those guys, and it'd help ensure the future of Fabled Lands releases (both print and digital) as well.

So let me plead with you: if at all possible, can you try and coax at least one person to buy Fabled Lands HD this weekend? It's a steal at $7.99, and this app is no mere ebook but a full-on, full-color, atmospherically soundtracked, immersively art-intensive 2D CRPG with new extended descriptions providing dozens of hours of play. All that for less than the cost of one of the new edition FL books. No wonder the Megara staff know their boss as "Mad Mikael"!

Fabled Lands HD in the App Store now!

Genius is said to be 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and Megara Entertainment have certainly put in the hard work necessary to create a modern gaming classic. After man-years of back-breaking and heroic labor, the Fabled Lands HD role-playing game went on sale just hours ago. All credit goes to Megara boss Mikael Louys and his chief coder, Roland Derhi, for getting this out the door - and they're already hard at work on the sequel and the iPhone version.

If you have access to an iPad, check it out as soon as you can, give it five stars, and make use of the Tell a Friend button at top right. The more people who download it today, the better the chance of getting it into the Top Ten on iTunes and staying there. And that is another thing that could help ensure the Fabled Lands gamebook series continues. So help spread the word - and have fun exploring the world of Harkuna in living color!

Mirabilis graphic novel app in Top 100 grossing books

I'm cross-posting this from the Mirabilis blog because Leo and I are just too darned excited to keep it under our hats. Mirabilis - Year of Wonders has been in the App Store for four days now, which is pretty fantastic as it is. But the really great news is that we just nudged into the Top 100 grossing ibooks at #99!

You can get the first instalment of the story completely free, then other chapters cost $1.99 each. So it was dizzyingly good news when we rose to #13 in UK iTunes books, but to actually be in the top-grossing charts too shows that new readers are following through with the story after they've been astounded by the fluid interface, easy in-app issue management, eye-popping zoom and page flip (courtesy of demon coder Simon Cook), magical colors (by wizard of the digital rainbow Nikos Koutsis) and stunning art (by maestro of the Wacom tablet Leo Hartas).

And don't feel left out if you don't have an iPad. You can read the first chapter on BookBuzzr or buy the trade paperback on Amazon. Next stop: the Kindle. And in the meantime, if you haven't got the Mirabilis iPad app yet, you can find it here in the USA and here in the UK. Spread the word!

Mirabilis - Year of Wonders launches on iTunes

My big news this week is that Mirabilis - Year of Wonders launched in the App Store for iPad. You can pick up the reader and issue #1 for free (US here, UK here) and subsequent issues are $1.99 each. We've styled them to be complete facsimile comic books, right down to the cover and letters page.

The zooming, page flipping and navigation is a dream - better, for my money, than you'll see in any other iOS comic book reader. And obviously I'm going to rate the content higher, seeing as it's written by me with pencils and inks by Leo Hartas and colors by Nikos Koutsis. Well hey, don't take my word for it. You can check it out for free.

The app quickly rose in the UK App Store book charts this week, reaching #13 (that's seventeen places above The Walking Dead and just two behind the DC Comics reader) and getting flagged by Apple as "New and Noteworthy". We'll be releasing new issues from February next year, so get iPadded now.

Not to forget print entirely, though, there's also a fabulous trade paperback edition on high-quality silk finish paper stock that you can buy for $19.99 on Amazon. That's volume one, which collects the first four issues, and volume two will be available by January. And UK readers might want to hold out for the large format harback editions that are due out from PrintMedia Productions in the spring - but those are only going to be available in Britain and Ireland.

A thing of beauty

This is a cross-post from the Mirabilis Year of Wonders blog, but I feel justified in squeezing a snippet about my personal projects before some more bits of big news from Fabled Lands LLP over the next week or two.

The Mirabilis Year of Wonders e-comic book is going to go live in only a few weeks now. But I just had to share this pic with you because I've been playing the ad hoc build and it really is a dream. Lush magic lantern colors, razor-sharp graphics, and an interface that's as stylish and smooth as an Irish coffee poured by George Clooney. If you're used to struggling with existing comic reader apps, you're going to be blown away by what our resident iOS wizard has conjured up.

Don't wait. Really, you should go direct to your nearest Apple retail store (look here for Apple in the UK or Apple in the US), buy yourself an iPad for Christmas, and you will then be able to get the reader app and the first chapter of Mirabilis free, with the other chapters available via our nifty in-app storefront. The Mirabilis graphic novel on iPad is our way of telling you that the Year of Wonders has arrived.