Calm the Storm caught my eye because i’m a sucker for interactive fiction, but also because it adds a neat new wrinkle to that.
Interactive fiction is one of the many ways the RPG experience has been translated, and often features some of the most novel ideas. It can be applied to many types of games, but it all ultimately comes back to the role-playing world.
With Calm the Storm, its roots are in interactive fiction. There are simple choices informed by a narrative that you’d find in a choose-your-own-adventure book or visual novel, but it also uses the podcast drama format and an interesting suite of control options.
Designed as an experience for all, Call the Storm opens with a full explanation of options. It can be played by voice commands alone or by clicking as usual. The narrative can be heard or appear on screen with audio descriptive text. It’s a neat feature that I appreciated, and for the audio side, the spoken choice aspect is a refreshing switch-up for the format.
The story unfolds much like an audio drama, with some moody cloud visuals to enhance the atmosphere. It opens with friends Theo and Kallie waiting in line for a club, discussing the supernatural, and it’s here that we’re offered the first choice of the branching narrative. Theo doesn’t believe in the supernatural, but Kallie does. So should Theo admit that? It seems like an inconsequential choice to us, but this is you shaping the intricacies of the dynamic between the pair, as well as serving as a gentle reminder of what’s to come.
Calm the Storm Trailer
Things move rather swiftly in the club, and the pair find themselves in the company of Gemma, an alluring woman who seems a little off, but not quite as off as the shadowy figure watching them from a distance. When the shadowy stranger approaches Kallie, another choice presents itself, and either way, it leads them into a night they’ll not soon forget.
Calm the Storm sensibly, doesn’t bog things down with elongated scenes and generally gets to the point pretty damn quickly. In barely a few minutes from meeting our protagonists, we’ve got hidden powers, vampires, werewolves, and a militia. It fits the medium of the experiment, and the whirlwind of confusion and chaos unfolds within the protagonist’s perspective of the events that transpire. Yes, it’s a bit hyperactive in its delivery, but it’s not a significant issue.
I think the developer, Ludic Lemur, stating this is an experiment was a wise choice. Viewed in that light, I found it a lot easier to appreciate the package as a whole. The potential behind this concept is genuinely exciting, and I can see how it could be further developed to flesh out the ideas presented in Calm the Storm fully.
Calm the Storm is free to download on Steam now.
