First Draft of the Revolution
An interactive epistolary story by Emily Short (2012)
It is dangerous to deceive a husband of magic-using rank...
Juliette has been banished for the summer to a village above Grenoble: a few Alpine houses, a deep lake, blue sky, and no society.
Now she writes daily to her husband. She tells how she went for a walk and ended thigh-deep in mud, how the draft comes in around the window, how extravagantly she has spent on new gloves, how she misses Paris.
She plans her letters on ordinary pages, but when they are ready, she copies them on paper whose enchanted double is hundreds of miles off. The words form themselves on the matching sheaf in her husband's study. No time is wasted on couriers.
First Draft of the Revolution is a puzzleless interactive epistolary story, in which the reader interacts by revising the letters exchanged by the characters. I commissioned the story from Emily Short, one of the most influential interactive fiction authors working today. The implementation was a collaboration with inkle, the studio behind 80 Days and Heaven's Vault.
Design and collaboration
Emily wrote about her approach to the story's design in her artist's statement.
Reviews
A marvel—an exploration of the space between the mind and the page the likes of which I've never experienced.
— Kotaku
An entire game based around valuing the reader-player's aesthetic sensibilities.
The mechanic really hits home, both as a way of furthering narrative and exploring characters, relationships, and societal pressures.
— Haruspex Games