LiveNovel is a flexible story that comes alive when players step in.

The narrative and the plot are the raw materials that players use to craft their own story-games. LiveNovel is the rough sketch of a story, providing a canvas of possibilities that players draw on in order to create a full novel. Players become the real authors of the story because what they do and what they look for (and what they decide not to do or look for) determines how the novel fleshes out. The LiveNovel stories are layered, providing different levels of depth to the reading.

The narrative context involves many different forms: objects, findings, places on a map, notes players have jotted down about their experiences, Internet searches, etc. This is why LiveNovel doesn’t look like a conventional novel. Instead, players find something more like a kit that contains an incomplete story, the tools needed to do searches, and blank spaces to piece all the fragments back together as they experience LiveNovel.

LiveNovel is a detection game that draws inspiration from classic storylines – a mission to accomplish, a city to save, a killer to track down or a last-second escape. Players immerse themselves in these scenarios as the heroes, and fulfill an adventure within the story. The LiveNovel outline can be refashioned each time with different stories and different details; in this way, it is a tool that can be adapted to a variety of communication needs and desires.