Opening Up Category 2021


Please note that voting is now closed. This year's Opening Up vote winner is Manzil by Nivritti Khurana.

A Web Odyssey

A Web Odyssey

Serge Bouchardon & alii
France

“A Web Odyssey” is a web-based interactive narrative which deals with the navigation on the Web. It is based on the figure of Ulysses trying to navigate back to Ithaca. It features the different episodes of “The Odyssey” (the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, C

Alex

Alex

Jiaqi Shu and Yifan Pu
USA

A boy and a girl, both named Alex, are trapped in the same body after an argument online. Players explore the space, investigate items, and solve puzzles to help the characters get out of the situation.

All of Me: The Twine

All of Me: The Twine

Caroline Horton
UK

The work is an intimate, absurd online exploration for one player of wanting to live, wanting to die and what can happen if we sit together with the dark.

Astronaut: The Best

Astronaut: The Best

Mike Sennott, David Mershon, Julia Y, and Matt Zapp
USA

A management adventure game about running a proper space academy using hard work, lies, and witchcraft. Traditionally, the space race is thought of as a gauche way to kill dogs using explosives, but you are expected to conduct your program with class.

At Nightfall, the Goldfish

At Nightfall, the Goldfish

(Mou Peijing) Melody MOU / 牟培静
China

An interactive digital story, exploring the new possibility of computational technologies to present the nonlinear narrative. This writing applies the first person for each character telling their life experience.

betweenspace

betweenspace

Camille Intson
Canada

The work invites you, a virtual audience, to an interactive digital experience, traversing the personal and the political through an exploration of the intimate nooks of a north London flat during a time of global crisis and quarantine.

Bitsy Garden of Forking Paths

Bitsy Garden of Forking Paths

Richard A. Carter
UK

A whimsical remake of the Borges short story, inviting the user to explore the divergent paths of the endless, labyrinthine garden, while leafing through cut up fragments of the original tale, reconstructing new drafts in the process.

Castle

Castle

Ria Chhaira
India

An alloy of interactive choice story play where the viewers have a command on the story plot, with the final reveal of a silent Monoact, with an added voiceover.

Cheat Codes for Hinterland Walkthroughs

Cheat Codes for Hinterland Walkthroughs

Jason Nelson
Australia

This digital poetry game replicates a journey through the SE Queensland hinterland changed by bush fires and the cheat codes found in a landscape reborn from tragedy.

Colo-Mitolo-Gital

Colo-Mitolo-Gital

Kevin Cadena
USA

An anthology website containing interactive narratives that reinterpret different family stories while layering in Colombian history and culture as a way to understand my own heritage through the lens of computation, the web, and play.

Conversations

Conversations

Yoann Bourse
France

You find a terminal. There’s someone else on the other side.

Curtain Call

Curtain Call

Mason Sabharwal, Zach Northrop, Melody X Wang, Ashley Ware, Jake Wylykanowitz
USA

A visual novel that explores the roles we play for those around us and the intimacy of truly knowing someone beneath their surface projections.

Dérives

Dérives

Serge Bouchardon, Marine Riguet, Hervé Zénouda & alii
France

“You are about to experience a poetic drift – visual and auditory – while walking. Depending on your pace, but also on the time of day, the season, the temperature, the surroundings, your experience will be different.”

Directional Pilgrim

Directional Pilgrim

Elfie Nelson
USA

This poetic experience uses Twine and operates like a hypertext choose-your-own-adventure. The player must navigate a map to unlock clues about the nature of the landscape – a process called “medicating.”

dont look at the sun

dont look at the sun

Vivid Grim
USA

Played by walking around a behavioural health ward and interacting with objects, it is a ruminative look at the feelings experienced by a nameless person temporarily stuck there.

Drone City

Drone City

Richard A. Carter
UK

This codework depicts life as an automated flying delivery drone in a gated traffic environment, with the city parsed as a tightly constrained, algorithmic space.

Fine

Fine

Conor Mulgrew
Northern Ireland

You play as Will Gorant, the world’s most optimistic man in the middle of an apocalypse. Journey through the city as you meet many creative characters along the way.

Flowers for Senkin

Flowers for Senkin

Maria Ivanova, Anna Gorovaya, Svetlana Ben, Marina Semenchenko, and Anatoly Perevedentsev
Belarus

A multimedia novel about one day in the life of the Nazi camp for Soviet war prisoners, Stalag 352.

Four Months Earlier

Four Months Earlier

Russell Quinn
USA

Linda is visiting Russell in Los Angeles, where he now lives. We join them halfway up a hiking trail. You must walk them to the top. Keep them within earshot and they’ll chat about Linda’s visit and the past, while trying to find the right time to bring u

Frog's Princess

Frog’s Princess

Kathleen Smart
Australia

A movie-length fully-voiced fully-interactive Medieval fantasy story for 9 to 11-year-old children.

Ghost City Avenue S

Ghost City Avenue S

Jody Zellen
USA

Avenue S is a meditation on disconcerting times—a reflection on isolation, nature, walking, politics and protests. It is an active viewing experience.

HIGH-EIGHT VIDEO RENTALS

HIGH-EIGHT VIDEO RENTALS

Stark Holborn
UK

On dark night, on a lonely highway, a green neon sign flashes, inviting you to enter HIGH-EIGHT VIDEO RENTALS. Who knows, you might just find what you’ve been looking for…

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood

Amy Scott
UK

A a darker/contemporary twist on the classic ‘whodunit’ genre. It uses a wide variety of media to create an interactive narrative that is designed to keep users guessing.

Indelible Stain

Indelible Stain

Julie Rae
UK

Indelible Stain is the first four chapters of a multi-modal narrative that tells the parallel story of two people’s PTSD occurring 15 years apart and explores the notion of gendered responses to trauma and the shame associated with it. Note: use the password PTSD to access the work

Klimper-KIT

Klimper-KIT

Vera Sebert
Austria

By pressing all different keys from A to Z and from 0 to 9 users do create a collage of sounds and signs. The virtual space enables language structures, which can be created or modified directly by the user.

Lonely Not Alone

Lonely Not Alone

Katie Dancey-Downs, extensive collaborators
UK

Co-designed by young people, for young people, to tackle the stigma of loneliness. The universe is a safe place for young people to share their stories anonymously, find their tribes, and discover the One Small Step that could help to make things better.

Manzil

Manzil

Nivritti Khurana
UK

Manzil is an analysis and adaptation of Bollywood stories into an interactive fiction format.

Neurocracy

Neurocracy

Joannes Truyens
UK

A sci-fi hypertext game that allows players to freely explore the Wikipedia of the year 2049. Then a murder happens and the editing war begins! Find clues, draw connections, compare notes with others, and ultimately solve the murder across ten episodes.

Packetsphere: An Internet Travelogue

Packetsphere: An Internet Travelogue

Becky Brown and Zak Argabrite
USA, New Zealand

An in-depth look at how the internet works; a critique of those systems from an environmental standpoint; an ode to 90’s media, including old GIFs, instant messaging, and the travel guides of old public access television; a dining experience unlike any ot

Prayers to our new God

Prayers to our new God

Yoann Bourse
France

Once upon a time, people looked at gods not only for source of morality, but also of meaning and structure in the world. Now, the source of ontological truth in our lives seems to have become the economy, shaping everyone’s lives through social media.

Ren's Demo

Ren’s Demo

Yoann Bourse
France

You will be offered to the Goddess as part of a mysterious ritual. Can you escape unscathed? Do you even want to if it means condemning the world to the Goddess’ wrath?

Secret Numbers of Dead Objects

Secret Numbers of Dead Objects

Jason Nelson
Australia

There is often an unexpected immediacy to gun violence. The movement of a finger can explode metal ending a trajectory of interactions. What remains from victims of gun violence are memories and legacies, tragic pain and remnants of unique experiences.

Shade of the Morning Sun

Shade of the Morning Sun

Christopher Marcus
Denmark

The 53+ stories and vignettes in the Shade of the Morning Sun collection chronicle the lives of a Scottish-American family over three generations from about 1968-2068. It is told as an ongoing series of short stories with the same recurring characters.

Shadows Become You

Shadows Become You

Susannah Lohr
USA

A serialized web-based psychological horror graphic novel. This comic uses its web format to immerse the reader into the world of the story through animation, time-released chapters, vertical page movement, and pacing.

Shambles

Shambles

Mona Lloyd
Austria

A short horror text game about holding on to your humanity even in terrible circumstances.

Shell Song

Shell Song

Everest Pipkin
USA

Shell Song is an interactive audio-narrative game which explores the concept of deep-fake voice technologies and the datasets that go into their construction.

Something to Remember

Something to Remember

Ruben Gandus and Lorenzo Micozzi Ferri
Spain

A first person exploration game that uses text as part of the scene and scenography.

Somewhere Near Romance

Somewhere Near Romance

Naomi Norbez
USA

Somewhere Near Romance is an exploration on the meaning of love, as viewed by a logical machine

Technicolor

Technicolor

Sam Butin
USA

A unique perspective that shows the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic (which threatened these care facilities more than any other group of people) through a disorienting viewpoint of those who had no idea a pandemic was beginning to rage around them.

The 4Runner’s Gospel (T4G)

The 4Runner’s Gospel (T4G)

Ken Egu
USA

A series of fictional video games and interactive content inspired by the New Testament. It takes players on a hands on visual and musical adventure filled with adrenaline, puzzling mysteries, and engaging animations.

The Avon Lady

The Avon Lady

Laura Catherine Brown
USA

When Margo arranges a home visit with free makeovers from her friend’s glam mom, who’s an Avon lady, their mother absents herself, leaving the three sisters alone. The evening erupts into an ugly free-for-all.

The Case of the Disappearing Dandelions – A Musical Mystery

The Case of the Disappearing Dandelions – A Musical Mystery

Nancy Sendler
USA

A digital literary love story and satire, a novel, inspirationally interactive, transmedia experience that bridges connections between the various worlds we travel: personal, artistic, political, virtual, and so much more…

The Journal of a Lonely Moon

The Journal of a Lonely Moon

Ryan Goward
UK

A small interactive play that features the celestial bodies of our galaxy as the characters.

The Method Detective

The Method Detective

Alan Bigelow
USA

Recently dumped by his girlfriend, his home life in a shambles, he distracts himself with any case that comes along: solving the murder of a “dead” conspiracy theorist who is not actually dead, but not really alive; bounty hunting a missing gerbil…

The Mouth of the Dragon

The Mouth of the Dragon

Marielba Núñez
Venezuela

A documentary poem called La Boca del Dragón, in which I narrate, through visual and textual documents and poetry, events that occurred to Venezuelan migrants on their transit to Trinidad and Tobago.

The Perfect Democracy

The Perfect Democracy

David Thomas Henry Wright, Chris Arnold
Australia, Japan

A digital Australian novel that follows the fallout from the passing of Australia’s wealthiest citizen.

The Poetry Machine

The Poetry Machine

Luc Grey Edwards
UK

An exploration of the boundaries given to poets when they choose to create within the ruins of another’s work. It considers the frustration of creativity being bound to a deadline or form.

The story of one castle

The story of one castle

Alina Vinnichenko, Tetyana Shcherbatyuk, and Artem Kuzmenko
Ukraine

The aim of our work was to reflect the history of one Ukrainian castle (the castle of Count Xido) through the process of storytelling of its owners in order to form in readers the views of the value of history and historical and cultural monuments.

The Weathering

The Weathering

Eva Louise Hall
USA

An interactive, web-based narrative film about a woman who, after the death of her husband, obsesses over finding his spirit and connecting with him in the afterlife.

Today

Today

Katherine Dusanic
USA

A short narrative game where you follow the player character as they go about their day.

Tugboats of the Moon

Tugboats of the Moon

Jason Nelson
Australia

Uses the re-written and re-conceptualised engine of my digital poem, Sydney’s Siberia, and rethinks it for our forever reshaped world.

Waters of the Gap

Waters of the Gap

Dylan Spicer
UK

Interviews with people claiming to have seen the goddess of the Roman Baths in modern times. This sits alongside articles on local history and folklore, and an interactive map containing each sighting.

Yolanda’s Ground Zero in 360

Yolanda’s Ground Zero in 360

Makoi Popioco
Australia

An interactive virtual reality tour into a Philippine coastal village that has been reeling from the impacts of climate change.

You Have Arrived

You Have Arrived

Elizabeth Wong
UK

An interactive textual game set in the near-future that captures anxieties about high housing prices and getting on the property ladder within the context of a climate crisis.