Monday 6 October 2014

Welcome to HAT!

Greetings, dreamers!

Today I want to show you a most peculiar story.


Device 6 is an interactive story, developed by Simogo (of Year Walk fame) and released in October 2013 for iPod touch, iPhone and iPad.


Set up as a story where you drag the screen to continue reading, you soon find that the written word does not just narrate what happens, but mimics its movements, having the text tilt and go in a long straight line to represent a hallway, turn ninety degrees to represent a turn, and
slowly

start


       spacing
 


                             itself



               out





                              as the character







               loses focus.



 Only to return to a single line once the character snaps out of it.

This screenshot may seem upside down, but the game will never rotate the screen for you. 
 


Quoting the site itself, the text, the narration, is not only a narration, but also a map, showing you where the main character has been, will be, and is.

Each chapter has a different puzzle that needs solving in order to continue, some more than one. The player is free to explore the map/text back and forth to search for clues, or things to interact with, in order to progress.

Interesting breaks dot the story
After each chapter, an intermission is shown, where you are given a questionnaire, to improve the game experience, yet the surreal questions just add to the uneasy feeling the story slowly gives the audience.

That's just the story interface. What about the story itself?

What indeed.

The main character, Anna, finds herself in a room she doesn't recognize, in a building she does not remember arriving. She tries to find a way out.

She finds herself in some sort of puzzle mansion, with the only way being forward, barred by increasingly mysterious puzzles.

Telling you any more than that would veer into spoiler territory, of the kind that truly ruins the experience of the story.

A talking monkey that knows french works a ticket booth
If you enjoy Ontological Mysteries, puzzles and riddles, exploration games and stories that slowly make the hair on the back of your neck stand, I highly recommend you give this story a try.

Fair warning: There are no alternate endings, so just focus on the story that you're given, and think slowly to solve the puzzles. They're not all that hard, they just requires a little thinking.

I hope you do get to experience this, Player249. I'm sure HAT would appreciate it.


I was going to recommend the series of escape-the-room games called The Crimson Chamber, The Viridian Chamber and The White Chamber, however they seem to have disappeared from the face of the Earth .

If you liked the text mimicking what happens in the story, I recommend you give House Of Leaves a try.

I thoroughly apologize for the lack of recommendations, but this truly is a very unique story.

I hope you enjoy it, and have a great week!

See you next time!

enistoja

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