Adventure Games…on YouTube?

YouTube might be one of the last places you expect to see an inter­ac­tive adven­ture game, but some very clever and cre­ative peo­ple have made it pos­si­ble by exploit­ing YouTube’s anno­ta­tions fea­ture .  The anno­ta­tions are pop-ups that pro­vide the viewer with a choice (for exam­ple, “Run” or “Hide”) and con­tain links to other videos that carry out the desired action.  With some carefully-planned logic and edit­ing, anno­ta­tions makes it pos­si­ble to cre­ate adventure-style games for YouTube that hark back to inter­ac­tive FMVs and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. Cool, huh?

There’s not many out there, but here’s a hum­ble col­lec­tion of the YouTube adven­ture games I know of:

The Time Machine

This game is a pro­duc­tion of film­mak­ers  Chad, Matt & Rob , a com­edy troupe from L.A. who have sev­eral film projects in the works. The Time Machine is cred­ited as being an inter­ac­tive adven­ture that is the “first of its type” on YouTube. If you enjoy  The Time Machine , be sure to also check out their other inter­ac­tive adven­tures on YouTube:  The Birth­day Party ‚  The Mur­der , and also the trailer for  The Trea­sure Hunt , which is com­ing soon.

Edit­ing the Dead

An inter­ac­tive adven­ture based on George Romero’s orig­i­nal 1968 film  Night of the Liv­ing Dead that uses actual movie clips (the movie in in pub­lic domain, in case you are won­der­ing how this game avoids copy­right infringe­ment).  Can you sur­vive the zom­bie apocalypse?

Deliver Me to Hell

OBJECTIVE: Help Steve get across the city to deliver his pizza with­out being KILLED by the zom­bies.

This one’s actu­ally a glo­ri­fied adver­tise­ment for New Zealand pizza chain Hell Pizza , but its so well done and enter­tain­ing that you’ll for­give the self-promotion. (You might also find your­self wish­ing for a Hell Pizza near you.)

Do you know of any other YouTube adven­ture games? Please share in the com­ments and I’ll add them to this list.

Related posts:

  1. Hands On with Gray Mat­ter, the New Adven­ture Game from Jane Jensen