Play This Story: The Book of Red Shadows is a unique psychological horror experience combining the art of literary fiction and the world of horror gaming. This free-to-play adventure is happening from 30 Oct to 10 Nov in conjunction with the Singapore Writers Festival 2020.
Date: 30 Oct to 10 Nov
Genre: Psychological Horror, Speculative Fiction, Metafiction
Platform: Play-by-Email
Story by: Victor Fernando R. Ocampo
Price: FREE
Registration opens on 9 October 2020, with a limited capacity of 280 participants. Pre-register to be notified when registration opens!
Synopsis
You wake up amnesiac, trapped inside a machine attached to probes, monitors and sensors. A civil servant named Tan tells you that you are freshly deceased. However, something called the Book of Red Shadows is keeping you from being brain dead for the equivalent of 10 days. You are now part of the government’s secret Red Shadow Project, whose aim—as far as you have been told—is to change the fate of certain people destined to die tragic or horrific deaths.
Using only a computer interface, you need to decide which random strangers will live or die, and then perform tasks to be able to literally make that decision happen. Survive long enough within the system and you will be given the same chance to rejoin the land of the living. However, with a rogue hacker threatening to destroy the system and an unknown digital presence—some form of consciousness trapped within Project Red Shadow’s massive AI—stalking you… you are going to have to get real creative in order to be able to make it out of there alive.
The clock is ticking. Can you manage to survive for ten days, uncover who you really are and write yourself back to life? Or will you be erased from existence in the most gruesome way imaginable?
How to Play
Play This Story: The Book of Red Shadows is a play-by-email style interactive gaming experience.
It is a text-based game which will require you to have a working email address, a connection to the internet and an interest in reading and writing in English to play. Some knowledge of the various Singapore languages and slangs will also come in handy.
All play will be done via email only. On the day game begins, you will receive an introductory email with a scenario, a few hints, a few options and be given 24 hours to reply. What you do next is entirely up to you.
Using nothing but the power of words, you will be able to engage in this fictional world in whichever ways you can think of. This could be a 10-day game for you, or not, depending on how ingeniously you choose to respond to the emails sent to you… and whether or not you survive your choices.
Do you dare go into Victor Fernando R. Ocampo’s future Singapore and take on the challenge of escaping from the government’s secret Red Shadow Project?
About the Author
Victor Fernando R. Ocampo is a writer of Speculative and Experimental Fiction. He is the author of the International Rubery Book Award shortlisted The Infinite Library and Other Stories (Math Paper Press, 2017) and Here Be Dragons (Canvas Press, 2015), which won the Romeo Forbes Children’s Story Award in 2012.
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