Games, Pop-Ups, 3D, and More – The iPad is Changing Books Forever

Singularity Hub reporting:
I grew up on a healthy regimen of Choose-Your-Own Adventure books, Nintendo, and role playing games, but even I am intimidated by the new brand of interactive storytelling that is flooding the iPad. More designers are exploring how the frenzy around Apple’s tablet computer is evolving e-books into something new. Sure, you can find traditional children’s picture books directly translated onto the iPad that simply let you flip through on a touchscreen, but there’s so much more the medium allows. Embedded games, interactive backgrounds, responsive audio, non-linear stories – “books” on the iPad have become something much better: immersive experiences. I’ve got a host of videos to show you what I mean, check them out below. Combining games, books, music, and voices in compelling ways, these early attempts to revolutionize storytelling on the iPad are exciting…but they’re just the beginning. Give it a few years and the lines between these different ways of telling stories will blur so far we’ll have to come up with a new name. ‘Books’ just doesn’t cut it anymore.
First on our list of the kind of interactive stories is Hogworld by Snowcastle Studios in Norway. Hogworld has the look of a classic children’s story book, with a lovable pig-bunny hybrid named Gnart taking a trip to the dentist with his bee friend Bibi. Snowcastle let me play the beta, and I can tell you that from the beginning this is clearly not a simple text translation brought to the iPad. You must guide Gnart through a world, exploring everything around you to find the clues needed to proceed to the next stage in the story. Yet it’s not simply a video game either. Hogworld is clearly aimed at engaging the listener, guiding them loosely through a very well crafted tale. Here’s a look at Hogworld, with narration still in Norwegian (don’t worry, the beta was in English, and the story will be coming to the iPad in Q3 2011):
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