The Cosmonet Games

Cosmonet and From Ivan are a pair of short branching narrative games in which the player controls the story indirectly by making seemingly mundane decisions.

Cosmonet and From Ivan are both experiments in narrative structure, in which the player makes small choices that indirectly influence the outcomes of the story. In Cosmonet, the player takes online personality quizzes as the protagonist, and the game tracks their answers along two axis: independent thought and optimism. This defines the protagonist's attitude and approach to the problems she faces, and results in her choosing different lines of dialogue and actions. In From Ivan, the player does not choose what message the protagonist sends, but rather how those messages are presented. The greeting card message, the style of party invitation, or the font, for example, will influence the way the recipient understands the message and reacts to it.

Cosmonet and From Ivan were developed in collaboration with Martzi Campos, musician Kyle Laporte, and writer Will Campos. The two games together were featured at the 2018 IndieCade E3 Showcase. For this event, we built an installation to house the games in thematically appropriate environments. To date, Cosmonet has been downloaded more than 2,500 times, and From Ivan has been downloaded more than 11,000 times.

Website: http://cosmonetgame.com/ 
Download: Cosmonet: https://ndef.itch.io/cosmonet/ 
Cosmonet is also available in the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.
Download: From Ivan: https://ndef.itch.io/fromivan/ 

Press: Kotaku: http://bit.ly/kotaku-fromivan 
Press: The Beat: http://bit.ly/comicsbeat-cosmonet 
Press: Unwinnable: http://bit.ly/unwinnable-cosmonet