Author(s):
Mez Breeze
Short Description
“Inanimate Alice: Perpetual Nomads – Sand + Smudges” comprises Part One of a five-part
Young Adult interactive Digital Novella.
Summary
Alice Field is back in a special five-part story spanning the gap between episodes six and
seven of the award-winning Inanimate Alice series. Fans of the series who have been
following Alice’s adventures for over 10 years can now experience Part 1 of this latest Alice
story told through an innovative mix of online storytelling and multimedia/360 photo
interaction.
Story
In this Part 1 of “Inanimate Alice: Perpetual Nomads”, Alice is stuck. On a bus. In the middle
of the desert, miles from nowhere. Great. Maybe she could go for help, but where? Like any
worldly 19-year-old adventurer, while Alice uses her phone to download a chat app called
Whispurring Nomads, she also takes stock of the environment she’s stuck in the desert, and
the others trapped on the broken-down bus with her.
Main Mechanics
Part One of the “Inanimate Alice: Perpetual Nomads” is made up of 38 pages containing:
• Dynamic text which contains interactive clickable regions that expand and reveal
additional narrative elements.
• 360 photo pop-outs where a reader is able to explore a rendering of elements from
an accompanying Virtual Reality Prototype.
• An original music score and video pop-outs presented as interactive “on-click”
components.
Features
1) Part One of the five-part Digital Novella Set accessible at:
http://perpetualnomads.inanimatealice.info/novella1.
2) A Virtual Reality Prototype for the Oculus Rift downloadable from:
http://perpetualnomads.inanimatealice.info/prototype.
4) A Video Trailer containing footage from the VR Prototype is available for viewing via:
5) High Resolution Screenshots available for viewing and download at:
Reception
• “Inanimate Alice: Perpetual Nomads – Sand + Smudges” premiered at the Frozen
River Film Festival in Winona, Minnesota on February 2017.
• In May 2017, “Inanimate Alice: Perpetual Nomads – Sand + Smudges” was
shortlisted for both the Judge’s Prize and the People’s Choice Award as part of the 2017
Opening Up Digital Fiction Competition: “The first ever UK competition to find the best new
examples of popular digital fiction…run by Sheffield Hallam University and Bangor
University, and part of the AHRC-funded Reading Digital Fiction project.”
• Also in May 2017, “Inanimate Alice: Perpetual Nomads – Sand + Smudges” was
presented as part of the Keynote Conference address given by Dr Carolyn Guertin at “Digital
Narratives Around the World: A Symposium on the Global Encounters of Computing and
Storytelling”.
Modality of presentation: Web based work
URL to work: http://perpetualnomads.inanimatealice.info/novella1/
URL to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OCz1gU3kbA&