Inkle turns to crowdsourcing for upcoming game Pendragon
Award-winning indie studio opens up for short stories submissions
Narrative-focused indie developer Inkle is crowdsourcing short stories for its upcoming game Pendragon.
Revealed earlier this month, Pendragon is inspired by Arthurian myth and allows players to create their own legends.
The UK-based developer is paying £40 for 500-word "ghost stories, fairy stories, tall tales of magic, or the deeds of old heroes."
The stories must be written in the developer's proprietary scripting language Ink.
"Tonally, we're more Ishiguro's The Buried Giant and Tennyson's Idylls of the King than T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone (too goofy) or Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising (too mystical)," said the developer.
"We're definitely not heroic fantasy, Tolkien or D&D. The only jokes we tell are bawdy ones."
While Inkle reserves the right to edit, embellish or "squodge" into shape for its game, successful submissions will be credited in the game.
Beyond that, the story remains property of the author, free to be reused or developed in other mediums.
Inkle is an award-winning studio, responsible for critically-acclaimed narrative titles Sorcery, 80 Days and Heaven's Vault.
Founder John Inghold appeared on an EGX Rezzed panel last month hosted by GamesIndustry.biz, discussing how to write for video games.