I spent a few hours this weekend playing 80 Days, an interactive fiction game for iOS. The game is absolutely worth checking out, for its steampunk art, for its navigable 3D globe, and especially for its story.

Meg Jayanth is credited with writing the adaptation, and she shares some thoughts on the experience here. Jayanth writes:

If I’ve done my job right, players will care as much about how they win Fogg’s wager as they do about whether they win. To me, 80 Days is less a game about winning a wager than it is a game about the choices you make, the stories you’ve been a part of, and most importantly, the people you meet.

This was certainly my experience. In my first play-through, my lusty protagonist Passepartout had a romantic tryst with a Mongolian woman on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and then later with a Death-costumed man on a Mississippi steamboat. These choices, among others, caused us to lose our bet and return to London about 20 days late, but for Passepartout it was totally worth it.

In my second play-through Passepartout tried his damnedest to be an impeccable valet. Yet despite avoiding trouble and returning to London in just 60 days, the journey felt flat. Even Fogg seemed to find his servant boring, and their relationship never hit the same highs as when they failed gloriously together.

Jayanth again:

It is a world where the protagonist’s story of racing around the world isn’t necessarily the most important, or the most interesting one available to the player.

Yes, and this creates an appealing conflict between the game’s goal (rapid transit) and the game’s payoff (exploration). It’s the number of stories — not cities — that makes this game’s world feel so big and appealing. I highly recommend giving it a spin.