Factsheet

Developer:
Silverstring Media
Based in Vancouver, BC

Release date:
August 4th, 2015

Platforms:
PC / Mac / Linux

Website:
dustydead.com

Regular Price:

Pay What You Want

Description

The Viral Dusty Dead Identity Quiz is a gamelike take on typical viral social personality quizzes of the type seen on Facebook or Buzzfeed. Through making selections in a quiz interface, you are told Which Dusty Dead Character You Are as the quiz itself glitches and decays around you, just like the fragile structures that support your contemporary lifestyle.

History

Conceptualized as a digital triptych, a series of three projects that explores how we consume media, the Book of the Dead universe took on new meaning for the team following the experience of gamergate. The studio was caught in the thick of the discourse when it was inexplicably pegged as a shadowy corporation responsible for controlling discourse in gaming, and forcibly infusing games with radical political agendas. This altered the course of development to directly examine media culture, social networks, and the ownership we feel over content. The Viral Dusty Dead Identity Quiz was originally created with a transmedia element discoverable after tweeting your results and signing up to a newsletter — Part 2. The newsletter is now defunct, but you can continue exploring the weird world behind this game by visiting ruinbook.net.For more in the Book of the Dead universe, see Progeny VR, and watch this space

Features

  • Find out Which Dusty Dead Character Are You and share it with your billion closest friends!
  • Explore a recreation of a 2007 fan forum, watch people get banned, and read fanfiction for a media franchise you've never heard of!
  • Pledge yourself to one of the dark gods of social media to explore the digital ghosts of a dead social network.
  • Featuring an original soundtrack based off the classic 90's cartoon opening song of Toon Channel's Dusty Dead Adventures, which will be stuck in your head forever
  • Watch out for the Creeping Horror. He still lurks. Banning can only do so much.

Videos

First Teaser Trailer YouTube


Images

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Selected Articles

  • "...despite the franchise not existing [...] it speaks to the power of viral marketing that the questions still feel important regardless."
    - , Indie Games +
  • "This is probably Dusty Dead’s greatest strength – where typical identity quizzes lead takers in the obvious directions of characters they know and love, this one has no frame of reference. In turn, I saw more of myself in the results I got than I would have in any other personality test. This feels like the game’s very indirect way of saying that’s all we get from personality tests – reflections of ourselves."
    - Dakota Corley, Indie Haven
  • "The Dusty Dead awaken[s] the imagination to action almost as a defensive response...In the narrative spaces that the names and places leave for you to fill, the stories you end up telling almost inevitably reflect something true about yourself."
    - Eve Golden Woods, Women Write About Comics
  • "...like Glitchhikers, it asking makes you take the question inside to try to make sense of the options, [...] and drags part of you out into them."
    - Alice O'Connor, Rock, Paper, Shotgun

DUSTYDEAD.COM
Check it out at .

RUINBOOK.NET
Explore the world of the Dusty Dead: .

The Virtual Dusty Dead on itch.io
Take the quiz here at silverstring.itch.io.

Progeny VR
Additional games in the Dusty Dead universe at silverstringmedia.com.


About Silverstring Media

Boilerplate
Silverstring Media is a game and narrative design studio in Vancouver, BC, crafting original games and providing services in digital place-making and storytelling. We are world-builders. We strive to push the boundaries of digital media, narratives, and architectural experiences, experimenting with form and content. Our aim is to bring diversity and hope to our stories and culture. Our team offers diverse expertise in storytelling, game design, architecture, production, writing, mobile and casual games, transmedia practices, narrative and experience design, music, and location-based experiences.

More information
More information on Silverstring Media, our logo & relevant media are available here.


Book of the Dead: The Viral Dusty Dead Identity Quiz Credits

Claris Cyarron
Design, Architecture, UI, 2D Art

Lucas J.W. Johnson
Design, Story Development, Writing, Website Design

ceMelusine
Design, Development, Visual FX, 3D Modelling

Zoyander Street
Design, Additional Art, Additional Writing, Historian

Devin Vibert
Music

Chris Cold
Concept Art


presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) - also thanks to these fine folks