Transform your stories into interactive game experiences on PC, Mac and tablet.I’ve mentioned One More Story Games‘ adventure game creation framework, StoryStylus, a couple of times before here on the site. Its primary focus is definitely the creation of games that rely heavily on text — both dialogue and written narration — as a story mechanic; indeed, it could almost be thought of as a means of creating interactive novels.

Well, as it happens, One More Story Games launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance further development of StoryStylus last week:

StoryStylus is an interactive storytelling games publishing platform designed for writers, screenwriters and game developers to create fun interactive reading experiences. Turn your stories into adventure games for the web or tablet!

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Imagine being dropped into some of the most exciting moments in a mystery story: chasing after Moriarty as Sherlock Holmes, hitting the mean streets as Sam Spade looking for the Maltese Falcon, uncovering a bizarre murder in a sleepy English village, piecing together a serial killer’s twisted clues from the remains of their latest victim. Maybe you want to adventure to planets unknown or discover beasts in the deep dark caverns of the underworld. Anything is possible with StoryStylus and our games portal.

Our games portal is currently mystery-focused , but we are expanding our genres over the next few months.

• Experience stories set in a real, historical, fantasy, or futuristic places.
• Search crime scenes for clues.
• Interview suspects and catch them in their lies.
• Trade information with people, but be careful who you trust.
• Explore how characters and suspects are linked together in a web.
• Piece together a timeline of events to see which alibi holds up.
• All critical information is hyper-linked together so you never forget who a character is or how they relate to the story.
• Take, use, or combine items to get further in the story.
• Collect mementos from your stories and display them in your sleuth office.
• Make notes on any aspect of the story to help follow-up on leads.
• Create a character for the style of sleuth you want to play.
• So many more features coming as stretch goals…

The lead developer of StoryStylus is Blair Leggett, also known as Flashy Dragon; some of you may remember him from the ill-fated Flash-based remake — more a straight-up port, really — of Ultima 4. His work experience includes Electronic Arts and Zynga, and titles like SSX and CityVille, although he has since left the employ of those companies in favour of pursuing the path of an indie developer from his home in Eastern Canada.

He actually released a video, recently, in which he explains how his work on an Ultima 4 remake led to the creation of StoryStylus:

I’ve chatted with Blair and his wife Jean on and off, mostly via Twitter, and both have confirmed that while the main focus of StoryStylus is indeed mystery games for the time being, it could indeed be adapted to tell stories set in a fantasy setting…even Ultima-inspired stories. I daresay that some of the excellent fan fiction that Ultima fans have written over the years might lend itself handily to this sort of adaptation, as an interactive story game.

The Kickstarter reward tiers for StoryStylus are a bit interesting, in that they are divided into two categories: players and creators. So, for example, a $5 USD pledge will get you two keys, which can be used to purchase games from the StoryStylus library once the project goes live. $10 USD and $15 USD pledges will grant even more keys in order to unlock still yet more games.

It is at the $30 USD level that things get interesting: one of the available rewards at that level is a bundle of 25 game keys, and the other is a one year subscription to StoryStylus at its Advanced Writer level. Starting at $50 USD, reward tiers include both keys and a StoryStylus subscription.

One More Story Games explain the game keys in this way:

Library keys represent our in-game currency that allows you to purchase premium storygames as they are published. A key is approximately $1 CAD, with discounts on large bundle purchases.

Published stories range from 1 to 5 keys depending on the amount of gameplay.

• 1 Key = 30- 60 minutes of Gameplay
• 2 Keys = 2-3 Hours of Gameplay
• 3 Keys = 4-5 Hours of Gameplay
• 4 Keys = 7-8 Hours of Gameplay
• 5 Keys = 10+ Hours of Gameplay

We’ll also have ongoing free-to-play content to will give you a chance to try out new stories by new authors!

Meanwhile, it would appear there are two planned subscription tiers for StoryStylus at this time:

Advanced Writer subscription 

– Up to 100 people can review each of your stories
– Stories are limited to 10 chapters
– Up to 5GB of media per story

Elite Writer subscription
– Up to 1,000 people can review each of your stories
– Stories are limited to 100 chapters
– Up to 10GB of media per story
– Access to upcoming writer development tools
– And more

As of this writing, $2,509 (out of a goal of $40,000) has been raised to support development of StoryStylus, and there are 25 days remaining in its Kickstarter campaign.