I spent last Sunday afternoon surrounded by fellow creatives at Dublin Gamecraft Unplugged. We had about 4h30m to make an analog game. Yep, that’s right! No videogames this time.

The theme was “Grow Your Own”.

I knew we didn’t have much time or materials but I wanted to make something different. A simple adventure game that physically grows as you play. I ended up with “Grow your own Adventure”: an interactive story where you follow a line, choose your path and your choices alter what comes next.

I started folding to see what I could do with one sheet, and accidentally got to this. Twice! If you had asked me to teach this to you I couldn’t remember how to, but muscle memory brought it back.

I kept folding and realized you can make very interesting “page turns” from just a single cut in the middle of the sheet. It allows you to hide surprises but, most importantly, make choices that change the layout.

I started drawing a line and improvising. Taking notes, seeing how far I could go with it and how many “faces” I would be able to write on.

In the end, I got to something I’m very proud of. It’s an interactive story system you can fit in your pocket. Your choices change it, so there’s some replayability. It comes from a single page, which makes it possible to distribute as PDFs.

You can see the other projects here.