Maginary — animated immersive book for iOS

Hello, my name is Semyon Poliakovskiy and i would like to tell you about Maginary — the immersive book, that demolishes the fourth wall between you and your imagination.
Maginary is a new type of experience at the junction of several formats: literature, games, and even cinema. This interactive book invites the reader to collaborate, sets imagination in motion, and engages in a story filled with vibrant animations, sounds and amazing interactions with the iPhone.

Just like most books, Maginary is based on the original story. At first glance, it is a regular adventure, with its plot twists and characters. But, unlike in other books, one of the main characters in Maginary is you, the reader. Throughout the whole story you help the other character, Michael. He was also reading this book before you, but never finished it. As a punishment, the book cast him into a different reality.

Maginary broadcasts everything that is currently happening to Michael in the other world into your imagination, and your task is to help him make it back to our reality.

To make this plot twist more plausible — so that you would believe that the world in your imagination really does exist — you will have to interact with it through the book itself. In one of the chapters, for example, you’ll have to blow at the book’s page (yes, on the screen itself) in order to raise some strong wind in Michael’s world and save him. In the other fragment, you’ll have to take 1,000 steps along with the book in order to help Michael get out of the endless desert. This interplay transforms Maginary from a regular book into a game-book, in which the player (reader) moves the story forward.

Another important element of Maginary that helps to erase the boundary between the real and imagined is the magical combination of animation, sounds and music that literally bring the text to life. The book turns these effects on just at the right moment as if by real magic: as you read about the “roll of thunder,” there is a thunder blast in your ears, or when you glance at the word “melt away,” the letters really do begin to melt away. This makes the text even more tridimensional and cinematic.

About the book’s creation

The book’s creation lasted two long years. Almost every page was crafted manually. All of the interplays, riddles, animations, and background sounds were created in conjunction with the story and closely integrated into the text. This helped to create a holistic opus, whose every element complements the others and works to submerge the reader into this unique experience.

This result was made possible by the team approach: the story itself and each of its elements were conceived by one person but were brought to life by the team of talented specialists.

Maginary is a debut project of a small independent team whose members live all over the world. The team core was made up of three people: the project’s author and mastermind Semyon Polyakovskiy, and two developers from the Tachos mobile development studio, Vitaly Trofimov and Vadim Vitekhnovsky. Many other studios and freelancers, such as QBSound, Petrick, YaroFlasher, helped to create the book’s sounds, animations and background music.

In creating this game, the developers wanted to demonstrate that together with technology, imagination can accomplish wonders and bring magic to life.

Materials:

All the press materials can be found here.

For further information contact us via hello@maginary.app