SimonBurfordRewind
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Back in the 80s, I started out my journey in programming by producing a series of text adventures - first for the TI99/4a home computer, and then for PC - back in the days when Scott Adams and Infocom were rulers of the text based universe and desalinating salt from seawater during a storm was obviously the only way to pursuade a volcano based bear not to eat you. Logic was often out of town in those days. I was working on my first actual solid state module for the TI when Texas Instruments decided that home computers weren't for them any more and threw in the towel. From there, I moved into database software development and systems design before becoming a SciFi and travel writer (www.offexploring.com/burfordstravels) but my heart has always been back there where I left it, frozen in time on a Savage Island, and I believe that now is the time to retrieve it. Some of you might even have a clue what some of that meant.
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Well, here it is - a link to the official download of Rewind: Interactive Edition (demo version) for Windows.
I can't currently test it here on a Windows machine with a higher vertical resolution than 768, as I'm developing on a Mac and the only Windows PC I have available is a cheapy portable jobby, so if anyone downloads it and finds that the interface doesn't automatically stretch to the height of the screen at higher resolutions as it should, just let me know.
It's a standard zip file, so just unzip to a folder on your hard drive and run the .exe. There will, of course, be silly little bugs lurking about as in all early test software, but I think I've hammered down anything I can find. The only issue I am still aware of at this stage is:
* When the menu first appears and you press an arrow key to move the highlight, it can take a second or two to load the sound file before the cursor moves. Then, everything is normal after that.
To toggle the menu once a game is underway, press escape (and again to return to the game). You can use the Quicksave/Quickload options on the menu to simply save a quicksave.rwd file in your documents folder - the save is overwritten each time. When you exit the game, a file called autosave.rwd is created or overwritten in the documents folder and reloaded when you next load the game so you can continue without saving/loading between sessions. To save under different names using a standard file dialog, type SAVE GAME or LOAD GAME while playing.
This is Interactive Fiction on steroids, so don't expect to be stuck in a room with a sword and a troll, a couple of visible exits and nothing else. The story moves on with or without you - in Rewind, you are quite literally playing a novel... imagine Interactive Fiction crossed with a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
If you like what you see, watch my Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/RewindTrilogy) for news of the Kickstarter campaign to produce the full game (of which the demo is a tiny fraction). If successful, I'll also be releasing the game engine - MORGANA - as a separate product with which you'll be able to produce your own games - both text based and (If all goes according to plan) entirely graphical point and click like the Sierra days of old.
This is the current demo interface running on a Mac, as it stands today - the Windows interface is pretty much the same but without the white border for all sorts of internal technical reasons. The icons under the inventory window on the left are placeholders, so don't be concerned - I won't be using the same icon for every button!!! The buttons in question, in case you were wondering, allow the inventory area to be toggled between semi-transparent, completely transparent or opaque... opaque being a word that only computery artistic types use because the word "solid", as used by everybody else on the planet, already exists and is therefore too obvious.
> EXAMINE GAME
Rewind: Interactive Edition will be a darkly surreal work of interactive fiction for PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, and whatever cool new OS some random tablet manufacturer manages to pull out of their butt before the release date just to really piss us off when we finally think we're getting somewhere. Experience your own personal slice of 80s technology without having to splash out hard earned credits on a time machine. Or wait for someone to invent a time machine.
> PLACE GAME IN SHOPPING BASKET
You attempt to put Rewind: Interactive Edition into your basket, but alas it does not yet exist and so the attempt fails. This places you into an existential quarry, where you are able to mine enough slate to employ a better proofreader.
> WAIT
You decide to camp outside the store to be first in line on release day. However, the game will only be available to buy online, so this does mean erecting a tent and building a campfire in your living room.
See, you just don't get people bidding you "Howdy" in British correspondence. Nice touch, but this is very much an American thing. I visited the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee once, taking a moment to sign the visitors book. They sent me a Christmas card for the next 10 years.
Also, never ask a Brit where to stick something, unless you want a sarcastic reply...
Major characters and entities in Rewind: The Interactive Novel (Planned playable characters are denoted by an asterisk, and may change, and other characters will become playable in future episodes of the game based on the 2nd and third books in the Rewind trilogy.)
WARNING: Contains spoilers
MAJOR HENDERSON*
Major Henderson is in charge of mining operations on LV13, and is responsible for watching over both the civilian miners and the marines directly under his command. His one goal is to protect the miners from the constant threat of Zentrassi attack at all times. A battle hardened Neutron War veteran who considers himself born to fight, Major Henderson may not be the smartest cookie in the jar but he is certain of one thing - something very strange is going on deep within his mine...
MAJOR ALLCOCK*
Major Allcock is in command of the latest group of rookie marines heading out to LV13 to start their service. He may be a hard taskmaster, but also likes to think of himself as one of the lads. When his small group of marines leave Earth for their 6 week journey, little do they suspect the nightmare and horrors that await them. By the time they arrive at Sanctuary Base, everything will have changed. Stranded on an alien world, far from home, Allcock and his troops find themselves alone against the Zentrassi horde...
ALDERMAN STALK
The Aldermen are the overseers of the Company, their function is to observe and to report dissent. Arriving on board The Sentinel as it is about to embark for LV13, Stalk instantly stirs up paranoia amongst the crew. Used to being the ultimate authority on board his own ship, Allcock is not happy to find himself working alongside a Company spy. Stalk seems friendly enough, but what brings him on board an ordinary troop transport?
PRINCESS*
Princess is the nickname of Sharina Abraham, the only female marine amongst the troops on board The Sentinel. Her external beauty and soft spoken voice belie the tough marine within, as many have discovered to their horror. Nobody crosses Princess and lives to tell the tale. Stranded on LV13 and at the mercy of the Zentrassi, Princess believes she has all the skills to lead the troops to safety.
TATTOO
Callum Davies is better known to the other marines on board The Sentinel as Tattoo, due to his propensity for covering his body in elaborate artwork. Tattoo was not cut out to be a marine, and would rather be at home with his wife. His career as a marine began unexpectedly when he was press-ganged back on Earth by Company recruiting officers and compulsorily conscripted into the service. Tattoo is starting to realise that there is a very real possibility that he will never see either Earth or his wife again.
JAR HEAD
Jar Head is the nickname of Jared Grimes, a marine on board The Sentinel. He hates his nickname, but is unable to persuade anyone to change it, so he takes his anger out on the enemy. Jar Head thinks of himself as the toughest of the tough, and is always the first into battle when the lines are drawn. Messing with Jar Head is a sure way to an early grave.
SPLIFF*
Keylan Payne, known to his friends as Spliff, is a new recruit on board The Sentinel. Believing himself to be far cooler than everyone else on board, he is often the life and soul of the party but just as often the butt of everyone's jokes. Spliff likes to be the center of attention and has a lot of growing up to do. The enormity of what he has let himself in for, or the mission ahead of him on LV13, hasn't sunk in yet - although by the time the marines arrive at Sanctuary Base, there will no longer be any doubt in his mind
Major characters and entities in Rewind: The Interactive Novel (Planned playable characters are denoted by an asterisk, and may change, and other characters will become playable in future episodes of the game based on the 2nd and third books in the Rewind trilogy.)
WARNING: Contains spoilers
THE ZENTRASSI
Parobisium Rex, also known as the Zentrassi. The largest species of pseudoscorpion so far discovered in the known universe - and LV13 is their world. They know every inch of the terrain - every hiding place, every vantage point, and they want nothing more than to kill. An armoured exoskeleton protects them from anything the marines can throw at them, and their armoured legs can rip a man in half in full armour.
DEACON*
Controller of the last functioning Homeworld mine, and Kantrell's boss. Deacon is an eccentric character who likes to fill his office with memorabilia from his life before the Neutron wars, a practice that the company will tolerate for as long as he can keep the mine productive. However, when Kantrell asks him to investigate the Company's decision to transfer him to LV13, Deacon is visited by a mysterious man in a bowler hat and suddenly vanishes overnight.
DR LANDRY*
One of the last truly remarkable men on Earth, Dr Landry is lead scientist at Rewind. For many years, he has believed that it should be possible to download and store the soul, the mind, everything that makes up a human being just as we store documents and images on a computer. Now, finally, his dream is becoming a reality. If he can just find a real world test subject, Dr Landry believes he is ready to offer immortality to the masses.
SAISHANI*
Just when all seems lost, Saishani suddenly turns up in the right place at the right time. Introducing Marie to an experimental project being undertaken by the Company, she explains that it is possible to backup Kantrell's thoughts and memories, restoring them into a cloned body if her husband is killed on LV13. Not only is it possible for Kantrell to live forever in this way, but he can come back in a fitter, younger body. This is the miracle Marie has been praying for. It all seems a little too good to be true…
HUNTER AND BECKETT (Will be major playable characters in episode 2)
Hunter and Beckett believe themselves to be two of the roughest, toughest workers at the mine. When Deacon, and then Kantrell's entire family vanish, their investigations lead them into a twilight world of lies and deceit which will ultimately lead to a more shocking truth than either of them could have possibly imagined. Pursued by assassination droids and with the Company hot on their heels, Hunter and Beckett must discover what has happened to Kantrell and expose the truth before everything they know is lost forever.
Major characters and entities in Rewind: The Interactive Novel (Planned playable characters are denoted by an asterisk, and may change, and other characters will become playable in future episodes of the game based on the 2nd and third books in the Rewind trilogy.)
WARNING: Contains spoilers
KANTRELL ADAMS*
As our story opens, Kantrell is a category C citizen in the city of New Amsterdam - a domed metropolis built upon the ruins of New York. Earth's fuel reserves are all but gone. As a worker at the last functioning mine, life for Kantrell is already bleak and without hope, but things becomes much worse when he is called to serve at the Empyreum mines on LV13, a distant world which promises the only hope for Humankind but is also home to the mysteriously aggressive Zentrassi. Nobody ever returns from LV13 alive.
MARIE ADAMS*
With their son Darwin, Marie and Kantrell live in a cramped accommodation unit overlooking the neon lit streets of New Amsterdam, a simple room bathed in a constant red aura. Every move is watched by the Company, some say every thought, and Marie knows that a single word out of place can lead to entire families vanishing overnight. With Kantrell heading offworld, she wonders how she will support Darwin - those who do not pull their weight live in constant fear of termination. Only a miracle can save her now.
DARWIN ADAMS
Unlike Kantrell or Marie, life in New Amsterdam is all Darwin has ever known. He does not share his parent's faint memories of life before the Neutron Wars, and believes this is how life has always been and how it will always be. At the Approved Learning Centre, brain parasites are implanted directly into his cerebral cortex, forcing him to learn what the company wants and nothing else. When you control what the children learn, you can tell when they know too much...
CHARON CARDELL*
Charon is self imposed chairman of the Company - the most powerful, and by extension the most feared man in the whole of the empire. He rules with an iron fist, people falling before his wrath. Nevertheless, he has to be seen as a benevolent leader to those outside the empire, and ensures that offworld Company operations are seen to be fair and legal by outsiders. The unintelligent Zentrassi are a thorn in his paw.
The day after tomorrow. Or possibly sometime next week.
The Neutron Wars have been and gone, taking with them most of the population of Earth. Those who survive live out their days under an artificial sky - trapped within giant biodomes and bathed in the purple aura of a protective shield. Dissent is punishable by death, which is kind of ironic since death is exactly what most people pray for every day.
Fuel reserves are exhausted. What little power The Company provides comes from offworld, shipped in from the vast Empyreum mines of LV13. But the mines are at the center of an endless war, a meaningless conflict from which no-one returns alive. A war we must not lose, and yet a war we cannot win.
Nobody knows what we've done to enrage the Zentrassi. The Company has been careful not to disturb their hives or to provoke them in any way, and yet the gentle creatures our research team adopted as pets during that first expedition have suddenly turned into merciless and indestructible killers. Sometimes, when nobody appears to be listening, people talk amongst themselves - they say that The Company knows exactly what we've done and that the truth is too horrible to contemplate, but those people usually disappear before they can elaborate any further. In New Amsterdam, it's best to remain silent.
Marie and Kantrell live with their son Darwin in a cramped accommodation unit overlooking the bustling central market, a small apartment lit only by a flickering neon sign across from a single tiny window . This is considered luxury, a privilage reserved only for those who work the mines and produce the power to keep the city teetering on the edge of extinction - but even here, every move is watched by the Company, some say every thought, and Marie knows that a single word out of place can lead to entire families vanishing overnight.
With Kantrell about to be shipped offworld to a distant war from which he will never return, she faces the prospect of losing everything - those without jobs or families to support them live in constant fear of being declared surplus to requirements and silently removed. Only a miracle can save her now. A miracle which Rewind Inc. is about to hand her on a plate.
"My name is Kantrell Adams, a category C citizen in the city of New Amsterdam. My parents, they were law abiding citizens before the Neutron Wars. I was but a baby when the bombs fell.
I work for The Company. We all work for The Company in one way or another. They tell us when to eat and when to sleep. They monitor our communications and dictate who we talk to. Some say they even listen to our dreams. Life in New Amsterdam is dark - dark like the colour of the bleakest night in hell."
"Light, heat, power. Things my parents took for granted are now beyond our reach. We plundered the Earth's resources until there was nothing beneath our feet but a hollow shell, and the Earth said: 'No more'. And then, as is the human way, we moved on to other worlds, other galaxies, and we took what we needed. We work the last of the homeworld mines. What little the planet has left to give provides power for the elite. The rest of us, we take what we're given and we're thankful for it.
Days become weeks, weeks become months. Life without hope, that is nothing but existence."
- Kantrell Adams
So who is Simon Burford?
Why, that's me - thanks for asking.
Back in the 80s, I started out my journey in programming by producing a series of text adventures - first for the TI99/4a home computer, and then for PC - back in the days when Scott Adams and Infocom were rulers of the text based universe and desalinating salt from seawater during a storm was obviously the only way to pursuade a volcano based bear not to eat you. Logic was often out of town in those days. I was working on my first actual solid state module for the TI when Texas Instruments decided that home computers weren't for them any more and threw in the towel. From there, I moved into database software development and systems design before becoming a SciFi and travel writer (www.offexploring.com/burfordstravels) but my heart has always been back there where I left it, frozen in time on a Savage Island, and I believe that now is the time to retrieve it. Some of you might even have a clue what some of that meant.
The concept work has been done in my spare time, but I'd really like to now dedicate as much time as possible to the project in order that it sees the light of day before the dystopian future depicted within actually comes to pass and the game becomes a documentary. I also intend to create a complete soundtrack and in-game graphics and illustrations, as well as developing several mini games within the adventure, and none of these things can happen without funding. If this pitch succeeds, I will be able to afford to work on the project full time and release the game much sooner for iPhone, iPad, PC and Mac - but that's not the whole story. By giving the Rewind project my full attention, I'll be able to produce episodes 2 and 3 of the book trilogy, follow-up games based upon them, and other advanced Interactive Fiction projects for the community - I'd love to re-code and re-release all of my original adventures from the 80s online, for example. If I exceed my goal, any extra funding will be put towards further Rewind related merchandise and bringing the project to a wider audience. Comic book? Movie? Who knows - the protective dome in the sky is the limit...
Follow me on Twitter: @SimonBurford
Or pop over and like the Rewind Facebook page at Facebook.com
Official Project Website: Rewindthemovie.net
Follow us on Facebook: Facebook.com
Rewind: The Interactive Novel is brand new dystopian interactive fiction - playable either as a full length old school text adventure, or in the format of a choose your own adventure book depending on difficulty preference - for Mac, PC and iOS. It will be based on my script book Rewind: The Empyreum War, which was itself written to redress the balance between a multitude of epic fantasy series hitting our screens in recent years and the great SciFi multi-part classic not seen since the days of Star Wars (yes, I know it's back!). Painting a bleak vision of a post-apocalyptic dystopia ruled over by The Company, Rewind: The Empyreum War (available to buy or sample through www.rewindthemovie.net or Amazon) has been described as a mixture of Blade Runner and Scary Movie, referring to a dark humour interwoven with a plot full of shocking twists which will make you laugh, jump and cry in equal proportions right until the very end - and if it doesn't, a couple of killbots from the department of corrections will be around to sort you out. Think "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Blade Runner" meets "Nineteen-Eighty-Fifth Element". Or Something.
Rewind: The Interactive Novel will be written using a proprietary mix of blood, sweat and tears, and by sitting up all night over an extended period of time mashing a keyboard while cursing loudly at my programming software's inability to magically know what I wanted it to do without telling me that everything is a Syntax Error. The game isn't written using any sort of Interactive Fiction design software, by dropping a new vocabulary into an old parser, or by rejigging something I made earlier using sticky-backed plastic and Lego (there's no s on the end, people) - this is an all new game, written from scratch in order to bring you just the right combination of retro and cutting edge and hopefully prevent latecomers to the world of interactive fiction from throwing both their hands and tablets in the air at the first sign of a tricky puzzle.
So what makes Rewind different from a traditional 80s text adventure, apart from the meticulously crafted graphics and 30 years of extra RAM and hard drive space just crying out to be filled with more story than a 16K ZX Spectrum could've ever imagined? Always assuming, of course, that said ZX Spectrum had the memory or hard drive space to run software capable of imagining such a thing, which it didn't. Excuse me for a moment, I appear to be stuck in a loop.
Imagine a text adventure so rich, so immersive that it'll be like reading a book and making a decision every couple of lines that changes the outcome of that book. Imagine a game where every command you type results in a paragraph that moves the story on rather than a simple impersonal "I don't know what a sword is." - a game with little repetition, big on story, and based on a full length Sci-Fi epic written by the same author. You're imagining Rewind: The Interactive Novel.
Like such IF classics as The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy before it, Rewind will be an adaptation of an existing book. Unlike H2G2, however, the game will run on computers and mobile devices capable of holding the entire text of the book, which means that the story will be far truer to the original. It will actually feel like playing a book, and where old school text adventures will have you stuck in a room for hours trying to work out exactly what combination of hieroglyphics you need to type in order to pursuade a troll to give you a sword, Rewind will involve you in a constantly moving story which evolves and develops according to your decisions. In Rewind, there will be no "stuck in a room", and the game's responses will adapt to the location and number of moves made which means that there will be very little of the numbing repetativness of old school adventures where every command results in a stock response.
The game is designed to appeal to hardcore text aficionados and newcomers to the genre alike, allowing the player to play through the game either as a traditional text adventure or a more simplified choose your own adventure novel. When in text adventure mode, the player is in control, typing commands that control the story, while Choose Your Own Adventure mode will offer predefined options throughout - making the game significantly easier for newer players who do not wish to spend their evenings searching Ganymede for a key. The game will also include original location and artwork throughout (both background graphics and in-line scrolling illustrations similar to the sketches in choose your own adventure books), an original soundtrack, and built-in mini-games to break up the typing and reading - and where possible, you'll be able to customise the interface, colours and fonts to your own taste rather than just take what you're given.
Until now, the Rewind project has been a labour of love, squeezing every moment of spare time out of me in the hope that one day Mr Hollywood might notice my book and hand me a large wad of Arcturan dollars to direct a movie (yeah, right) - but now, I'd like to put my full time into the project and dedicate myself to producing an interactive novel to the same standard as the book, full of devious sci-fi puzzles and mind bending logic, but without a Babel Fish dispenser or colossal cave in sight. Except perhaps in parody. This will be a new breed of game - a game which will suck you in and involve you, and have you wanting to play it through again just to see what would've happened to the narrative if you'd asked the Squarglian bouncer politely to let you into Blue Johnnie's rather than dropping that rock on him from the third floor balcony.
If the Kickstarter campaign is successful and Rewind: Interactive Edition becomes a reality, I also see it as a demo of a brave new world for interactive fiction, in which you are literally "playing" a book rather than being endlessly stuck in a room until you solve a puzzle. The locations, complex puzzles and exploration are still there, but everything you do moves the story on. It's as though you're reading a book but controlling the story, but with the level of control of a text adventure rather than the limited options of a choose your own adventure book (although, in Rewind, you can choose to play as either to make the game easier for newcomers to the genre).
If I exceed my funding goal, I hope to release an all new interactive fiction development system specifically designed to create interactive novels just like Rewind, so that others can create similar games with the same level of depth.
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