12 indie devs team up to make the dark, surreal, brilliant Experiment 12

Chain games/worlds are a fantastic idea, and we need to see more of them.

Chain games/worlds are a fantastic idea, and we need to see more of them. Case in point: indie mega-collaboration Experiment 12, for which 12 indie developers (including VVVVVV's Terry Cavanagh, Lone Survivor's Jasper Byrne, and Kairo's Richard Perrin) each developed a chapter of a wonderfully strange, often hallucinatory story, before passing it onto the next creator in the chain. The results can be found here.

The Rules, as stated on Terry Cavanagh's blog, stated that each developer only had three days to complete their entry, before they passed it on to the next, who would pick up the story and run with it, morphing the method of interaction in the progress. Cavanagh went first, creating a dark, manic puzzle-platformer, and things just got weirder from there.

Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV, Super Hexagon) Ian Snyder (Captain Dan v. Zombie Plan) Jack King-Spooner (Will You Ever Return?, Blues for Mittavinda) Zarathustra (Eversion) Richard Perrin (Kairo) Michael Brough (Vesper.5, Corrypt) Robert Yang (creator of Half-Life 2's Radiator mod) Alan Hazelden (These Robotic Hearts of Mine) Benn Powell (RGB) Jake Clover (Sluggish Moors) Micheal "TheBlackMask" Lawrence (Dopterra) Jasper Byrne (Lone Survivor)

Terry came up with the idea after noticing this RPG Maker chain game, and I can only hope that Experiment 12 inspires more developers to give chain development a go.

Thanks, Eurogamer.