Turn your literary work into an interactive fiction
With Finnegan, our interaction fiction engine, we use our expertise to adapt strong literary IP and classic works in to interactive fiction. We like to work collaboratively to ensure the spirit of the work remains intact when it becomes interactive and available to a new generation of readers. Our engine already offers a strong set of features, but we are open to discuss additional mechanics or features if the body of works requires it.
Finnegan Motors Features
Our engine, built on top of Unity, already leverages some core features. Depending on the needs of the work being adapted, additional mechanics and features can be added.
Reading
Interactive fiction is still literature, but structured differently. We offer systems to allow player expression and agency:
Dialogue choices
Branching narrative
Exploration interface
Chapter management
inventory
Finding, amassing and using objects is a staple of video games. It allows to create excitement and let players unlock new spaces, parts of the story and chapters to read.
audio
As your readers enjoy the interactive fiction, we can immerse them with music, sound effects and voice overs just like an audiobook would.
puzzles
Aside from reading, dialoguing and amassing items, your readers may be brought to use their brain and solve puzzles. Seeking proactivity once in a while keeps them engaged and more motivated to start just one more chapter before bed.
About Finnegan Motors
Affordance Studio and Alto Publishing, with over 20 game projects launched and over 200 books published since their respective inceptions, share over two decades’ worth of storytelling experience filled with success. Finnegan Motors is the result of examining the challenges related to narrative video games which the Affordance team encountered during its first projects, as well as the revolutionary meeting between the literary industry and new technologies Alto is aiming to facilitate.
Morbus Delirium, a narrative game taking the form of an interactive comic book in collaboration with the Montreal Science Center, helped Affordance realize the difficulties regarding content integration in gamified storytelling. Alto, meanwhile, has been working with Quebec authors for more than twenty years, only to realize that their talent could extend well beyond their medium of choice. That said, nothing matches the satisfaction of a well-told story.
Thanks to this project, both Alto and Affordance believe it will be possible to inspire the world into taking part in a new style of interactive narratives, bringing in established authors to populate these games with their own creations. This is why, hungry for innovation and hoping to offer new venues of ludification, Antoine Tanguay (Alto Publishing) and Pascal Nataf (Affordance Studio) have joined forces to create Finnegan Motors in 2021.
Antoine Tanguay
Founder of Alto Publishing
Antoine Tanguay has been a bookseller, radio host, website editor, journalist and chronicler for films, radio and written works before finally founding Alto Publishing in 2005. A highly engaged entrepreneur and tireless creative renowned for his vision, Antoine is notably a co-founder of Les Libraires magazines and the non-profit organization Les Autres Jours, a co-working dedicated to arbitration and multidisciplinary creation surrounding books.
Literary and artistic director at Alto since its inception, he has been following authors for over 20 years, cumulating in over 200 published titles. Always on the hunt for innovative practices in the literary world, he believes it’s time to redefine what being a publisher really means.
Pascal Nataf
Co-founder of Affordance Studio
Pascal Nataf teaches game design at the University of Montreal and is the co-founder of Affordance Studio, a company that specializes in games for social impact. He is very involved in the independent video game scene, having notably co-founded La Guilde, a producer cooperative that regroups various Quebec-based game studios, as well as the Indie Asylum, and incubator and accelerator for video game studios.
Take a look at our most recent project!
Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination
Take part in an expansive choose-your-own-adventure novel, where you’ll uncover the secrets of an anachronistic corporation reigning over a post-truth world. Solve cryptic riddles, make difficult choices, and do whatever it takes to escape the depths of SMYRNACORP with your mind intact.
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