Factsheet


Status

Completed/patching

Developer

Affinity Forge

Publisher

Legendary Affinity

Release date

May 2020

Enhanced: Jan 2021

Platforms

iOS

Android

Website

https://affinityforge.com/the-broken-bottle

Genre

Immersive Digital Storytelling
Fantasy

Overview


Join Florin and Zana in an enchanting narrative set in medieval Romania through Affinity Forge’s first Immersive Digital Story (a choice-driven narrative game).

The Broken Bottle is our first Immersive Digital Story. It represents a concept we’ve been working on for years as a fully distributed, intimately sized, passionate team. We decided to launch this as a stand alone to get one of our stories out a little quicker.

This represents a core feature in the grand vision for a new approach to storytelling.

Story blurb

Orphaned and alone in medieval Romania, Florin loses his last lifeline—his sister, Nadia.

He, and his faithful wolf, Zana, need your guidance to navigate the mysterious snow-covered landscape around the Roma circus.

With an enigmatic cast, danger around every corner, and the faintest whisper of magic around Florin, can you find his lost sister, and restore his family's legacy?

...or will you fall prey to the tyrant?

Brave the path. Or die trying.

 

Videos


The Broken Bottle Official Release Trailer

 

The Broken Bottle Story Trailer

 

Official Broken Bottle Credits (Potential Spoilers)

 

Images


Update: After our alpha test, we found nearly all the testers were asking for more art. We have nearly doubled the art and have animated each! You will find 20 beautiful pieces of art (in addition to the beautiful art that is our reader interface and menus) in our immersive digital story.

We sincerely hope you deeply enjoy what we have created for each of you.

Our beautiful title screen by Anh Luu

The Reader Interface

A new story begins

 

A Sneak Peek: Character Art

Some of the many characters you might meet

 

A Sneak Peek: Scene Art

 
 

Background


We want to see more story driven games come to life. Exploring ways to tell stories through text in innovative ways is a challenge. We feel it is one over which we are called to claim ownership. Though this is our first, we wanted to find a way to give our enjoyers a way to experience reading again while giving them an enhanced experience. We deliver our stories with captivating art, animations, dynamic sounds and soundtracks, ability to make choices which affect the way the characters interact with their world, and more. Setting the tone for the stories and allowing several extremely talented creatives to tell stories in their unique mediums is incredible to watch. Experiencing the stories knowing this is really fascinating. It’s very personal. 
 

 
 

Features


Enchanting stories

We love movies and some good TV series so we wanted to bring an experience as close to this while still maintain the integrity of the reading experience. We hope this will excite people to read more.


Our writers have some really cool concepts on the drawing board. From The Wild West to Feudal Japan. Our first story, The Broken Bottle, is based in Medieval Romania.

Beautiful interface

Our first illustrator Anh Luu did an incredible job transforming our thoughts and multitudes of sketches and descriptions into one beautiful reader interface. “Not only is it beautiful— the style feels right.”

Lovely art

Our illustrators have worked closely with our writers to express the story in their own way while staying true to the writer’s vision. Another interesting challenge to conquer as a completely virtual team. Our goal with the art was to richly supplement the stories and have fun! We feel if we have fun and have an affinity with our work that our enjoyers will feel that heat emanating from our experiences - a Legendary Affinity.

Choice driven

The writers have taken a cool approach to empower the readers to determine the outcomes of the story while the player maintains the role of a reader rather than a character in the story.

Replayable

Each story has several outcomes. We challenge players to think differently each time (almost taking on different personas themselves) to experiment and appreciate the story from multiple angles.

Multi-world fantasy

This stand alone story represents what is to come. There are multiple layers to all of the stories that will be living in the universe we are crafting. We will invite readers / players to dive into the multiple worlds and stories which make up the “parent app”, or universe.

 

Sounds


We have crafted nearly 20 tracks for this story. You can expect to hear the half that made it to the Immersive Digital Story.

 

About Affinity Forge


Legendary's first Realm

Affinity Forge brings incredible creative individuals together to champion Legendary Affinity's vision of activating all creative heroes.

Our focus
Bring story driven games back. As storytellers, we yearn to craft, tell, and share great stories with the world and have a blast in the process. Each artist expresses the story in his or her medium - we love that.

 

Credits


Team Members involved

  • Josh Irvin - Lead writer / storyboard artisan

  • Anh Luu - Illustrator / UI designer / character designer

  • B.R. Manente - Writer / character designer

  • Kathryn Mariko Lee - Developmental / copy editor

  • S.S. Trantham - JIT assisting editor

  • Victoria Cosby - Illustrator / setting designer

  • Victoria Rowe - Illustrator / setting design advisor

  • Joey Boyer - Lead orchestrator / executive producer

View Full Credits

Background on the team

The first story, is what brought us together. About two years before The Broken Bottle went into development, we had an idea to create a game where you would read while working directly with the main character. B.R. Manente, our first writer and team member of the founding company Legendary Affinity looked at the idea and started to bring new concepts to the table. Shortly after, Josh Irvin joined the team. The concept evolved, expanded, and was refined into our first stand alone title, The Broken Bottle, to what you are now discovering.

We have worked hard as a core seven man / woman team (along with about seven talented freelancers) working virtually across the worlds many time zones as we all have, in tandem, been working other jobs. The amount of documents, notes, drawings, wireframes, user flows, and everything in between is a mindblowing vault of how far we’ve come.

We have big plans for the concept this game represents. We have great people on the team and we hope this will bring even more creatives together to craft more awesome stories to life on the a new platform to house many stories using this concept - though, we are adding features in response to feedback so that we may already start taking this to the next level.

“I deeply thank the creative heroes who have contributed to this project. Their passion to contribute to the project is so humbling and an honor. As this project grew, I felt this would be the project to bring us all together - a passionate team spread throughout the globe with the desire to activate all creative heroes to build a Legendary Affinity. We might get one download or thousands...I see this as one of the best team building experiences that could have been launched. With this group I have complete confidence that success is only a matter of when.”

-Joey Boyer - Undaunted Orchestrator / Founder

 

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