Josh Ling @ Adopt Me!

Friends have been asking me if @inkleStudios is working on anything at the moment. The answer is sort of, we have a lot of things we’re trying, some further along than others. But here’s a quick bit about my current full-time dalliance.

It’s a spreadsheet game. By that I mean a game made up purely of dialogue barks, fired off under conditions. (Obviously we’re writing it ink, because I can’t write in anything else.) So how good can barks be? Imagine the basics: barks that never run out, and never repeat.

Now let’s make barks that change some internal state. What if barks can tell the story, whatever the story is? (Okay, now you have Reigns.)

But what if barks were really specific? To individual characters, to places and moments in time? What if barks represented moments that couldn’t ever be taken back? What if barks could be precious moments…

We’re building it up in layers. A good few months were spent just doing groundwork barks - the to and fro, the game-specific stuff. (Respect to bark-writers, it’s gruelling stuff.)

The next layer up is conversation and response. Barks from one character that are heard by another, remembered, replied to. Barks that share information, or make discoveries, or fill in the world.