I’m all for making games into a more narrative experience. The idea of interactive fiction has always held a certain pull, illustrated by a childhood obsession with choose-your-own-adventure books. Random House’s new project, though, left me thoroughly nonplussed at first glance. Titled Black Crown , Random House describes it as “an infectious new kind of narrative gaming experience,” declaring that players will “join the shady Widsith Institute as clerks, whose work is managed through the application of bespoke diseases, to facilitate the task of categorizing and analyzing the Institute’s archive of diaries and journals, belonging to the world’s greatest explorers, those who travel beyond the edge of the world.”
It uses the Storynexus platform, but Random House speaks of “bespoke functionality” and “additional Miasma features” without really detailing what any of these entail.
From my limited experience with it, it appears to be a very dark, verbose game in the functional vein of many Facebook titles, with limited actions one can take over a certain period. It doesn’t seem to have a traditional narrative, instead relying on imagery and atmosphere for its impact. It will be very interesting to see if this sort of thing takes off in the future.
Source: Press Release