Adventures in the Gutter

#adventurejam

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**Short Description:

'Adventures in the Gutter' is a narrative driven adventure game about two archaeologists working in the 1920's. The game draws from graphic-novel and comic-book traditions - where much of the action is laid out in black and white ink, but the the 'gutters' between the comic panels offer a space for the reader to explore and co-create an adventure. In the game, therefore, you can read the pairs of fixed comic panels before diving into an adventure in the gutter - taking an active role in imagining the characters backstories, developing their archaeological processes and exploring their relationships. As you interact with objects in the gutter you gain more insight into the story and the characters and can make decisions about how the story unfolds outside of the main frames. Takes about 30 minutes to playthrough - some branches within the dialogue means replaying is advised.

'Adventures in the Gutter' was made in one week for the "adventure jam" - read more about the team who made it and the process here: http://adventuresinthegutter.tumblr.com/about

Made by:

Luke Botham (@vazzan - http://www.vazzan.co.uk/) : Concept, Coding

Andrew Reinhard (@adreinhard - https://archaeogaming.wordpress.com/) : Music

Daniel Dunne (@DanJDunne - ): Script

Tara Copplestone (@gamingarchaeo - http://taracopplestone.co.uk): Concept, Art, Narration

Controls

Use space-bar to enter into / leave the gutters. W and S to shift between the comic strips and mouse to interact with items. When you interact with objects you will hear further audio and will not be able to exit the gutter. To complete the game you need to complete all of the actions and expose all the gutter sections.

Bugs

• *Two known bugs - both audio related. Sometimes the loop will falsely complete and you will be able to exit a strip before the audio has completed - this will mean the final completion phase is unattainable - working on fix. Sometimes the dialogue will play the wrong option - usually caused by dragging the option over multiple 'goals' - working on fix, for time being it is avoidable by not dragging the action items over multiple goal slots.

Due to the Unity Web player finickity-ness we didnt get to propperly test the web version... Hopefully it still plays ok - let us know if not!

Long Description:

Comic books are fragmented stories, seperated by the blank space of the 'gutter'. In this space the reader is given the agency to co-create the story... imagining the interactions which occur to move from scene to scene and creating a rich back-story which exists abstract from the ink on the page.

Likewise, archaeology deals with fragmented stories, seperated by immense blank spaces. To progress the story of the past the archaeologist must look to the fragments - the artifacts and additional data - and use their imaginations to co-create stories to link those fragments together.

In 'adventures in the gutter' fragments of the story exist, but to progress the player must enter into the gutter and take an active role in interpreting and directing the story. the overall narrative - as is the case in both comics and archaeology - is moulded by the black and white entities - the ink and artifacts - but by entering into the gutter the player is given the agency to co-create the back story, decisions, thoughts, feelings and actions which take place between the panels...