Video Games Have Been Using the Screenlife Method for Ages
Video games have been using the screenlife method for quite some time now, creating the worlds so vivid that players might lose their sense of reality. More and more game developers are using our desktops as storytelling instruments.
HER STORY (2015)
Desktop thriller
Her Story is in a sense a unique video game. There are no levels and no ‘Game Over’ messages!
The main idea is simple: you’re operating the computer at the police department. The player becomes totally engaged in the narrative, since in order to solve the crime, he must browse the keywords database that can help put all the puzzle pieces together. The words you type lead to a series of video interviews with a woman. It seems she knows more than she tells. There has been a murder and you have to investigate it.
This game utilizes screenlife elements in an interesting way. And what’s also interesting — you can’t just win, but you can try to complete the story in your own mind.
Stories Untold (2017)
Horror Almanac full of the 80s nostalgia
Stories untold is an episodic adventure horror game. The 80s vibe is in the air after the premier of ‘Stranger Things’ and other movies.
The game consists of four chapters. In each one you play as a person who interacts with some kind of device: it can be a computer with a text adventure game on it, a radio station somewhere in the permafrost, a device used for strange experiments. On the screen of your computer you can see the room full of various devices, which in turn has screens, buttons and other ways to interact with them. The boundary between the two levels of reality in the game is very fragile. Sometimes the actions you perform in a text adventure affect the surroundings.
Like so much in the format of screenlife, the game is technically unique, and draws the player differently and deeper than monsters running around the screen or a plumber jumping on skulls.
