Random House testing the Interactive Fiction waters

Interactive Fiction is a literary form that, in my opinion, still has a lot of room for exploration. It arguably had its highlight back in the 1980s, between the series of insanely popular Choose Your Own Adventure books, and the popularity of early text-based computer games like Zork. (Which I won, by the way. Just throwing that out there. Played it on a Kaypro II.)

Random House has a new publishing venture, and you can sign up for the pre-release here. It's called Black Crown, and it is deliriously, delightfully weird. The game is free to play, although clicking each option costs you one action, and it sounds like you will be able to buy more actions in the future with actual money. If so, this positions Black Crown as a unique combination of "freemium" games like Farmville, and interactive fiction literature.

No word yet on the author of Black Crown. Random House will only say that it is "a debut writer." This rules out China Mieville, although what I have seen of Black Crown so far seems extremely Mieville-ish. Although with a surprisingly light, if frequently absurd, sense of humor. (Mieville is many things but "funny" is not really one of them.)

The introductory bit of Black Crown takes the form of a five-part questionnaire. It drops hints that the narrative may have something to do with 18th century plagues, referencing as it does two epidemiologists of that era. And one of the questions gauges your bubble of personal space, which makes me think of communicative disease transmission, or maybe that's just an expression of my own personal neuroses.

Is it steampunk? Is it alternate history? Is it set in the bizarrely distant future? It's impossible to say, but I signed up to eagerly await the launch, scheduled for May.

Screenshot copyright Black Crown/Random House