Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
Transit. That's when I typically bring my phone up for gaming. I'll flit between email, Twitter and a short gasp of play like Threes if it's a jaunt to the mall, something more substantial if I'm expecting to be out for a while. It's mostly a means of distraction while I'm away from the more rooted experience of gaming at my desk. With that in mind, the irony that Jules Verne inspired iOS game 80 Days held my attention while I was entirely stationary isn't lost on me.
From the gaslit streets of London to clear skies over Cairo, carried by the groaning legs of the ambulatory marvel of Agra or a boat permeated by the scent of overripe bananas, the places you go and the ways you get there are only ever half the story...
While Inkle Studio's 80 Days is evidenly based on Around the World in 80 Days, this is never really the story of detail-oriented gentleman adventurer Phileas Fogg. In fact, he's the secondary character you might expect his valet Jean Passepartout to be. A meter to be filled, a dialogue to be had, while you're the one having the brunt of the adventure. And that's a good thing. The fact that you play as Passepartout, newly hired and eager to please his demanding employer, is the first indication of what can be expected from 80 Days. This is not a story about aristocrats and colonial triumph and exotic damsels and pith helmets.
While the bare mechanics of the game involve negotiating passage from city to city and keeping your master happy (Fogg famously fired his previous valet for bringing him shaving supplies two degrees off from their ideal temperature) the majority of play time is spent soaking in (and at times defining) a wealth of experiences. Idealism and realism are present in equal parts, and for every female airship captain with a crooked grin on her face and a wrench in her belt there's a former slave waiting to share a drink, a kiss, and a bitter dose of his reality. This is a story about both how different and how similar we all are... That happens to be set in a world where they may or may not be quarantining actual dinosaurs in Iceland, no big deal.
80 Days seems almost endlessly replayable. There are so many routes to take, so many stories to complete and rumors to follow. Every path, not to mention the timing of your travel, can have a tremendous impact. I arrived in Manila just in time for a Cholera outbreak (I advised Monsieur Fogg to stay cleer of the river and boil the water, of course) but left San Francisco just before riots erupted. An English suit I'd used to coax officials into many a discount or schedule adjustment became much less effective when Jesse James himself stopped our train and claimed half our money and both of my shoes. In the final stretch of the journey, I was forced to leave all of our belongings behind (including a prized souvenir ferrotype) in order to secure our place on a massive cargo airship with conspiciously little room for any passenger cargo. Probably because of those dinosaurs I mentioned.
Dinosaur carrying airships. I'm just putting that out there.
You shape how each event that Fogg and his valet encounter unfolds, but you are just as often shaping Passepartout's perceptions and defining his character through the way he sees the world. Is your Passepartout a man who will sit down and share an apple with a man who doesn't share a language? A man who stares slack-jawed at the technological marvels around him? A man more interested in the state of his shoes than the state of his fellow passengers? A man who will look back over his shoulder as he disembarks from an airship to try and catch sight of an apatosaurus with a big "To: Iceland From: America" tag hanging around its neck being unloaded from the hold?
Of course games like this, which tell stories that can vary wildly from player to player, are best when shared. 80 Days makes sharing your entire adventure, not just your results, ridiculously easy by exporting an abbreviated travelogue. You can see mine here, for example. While I wish they went into just a bit more detail about each occurance, it's quite handy for comparing travel notes with others.
If you want to see more of 80 Days, check out this demonstration video from AppSpy or check it out on the App Store.
Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.
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