The Abbot’s Book wants to be the gothic Myst of virtual reality — can it pull it off?
[Philip Lelyveld comment - I saw an early version of this a year ago. It is very dark - as in night time and castle underground passageways.)
Every once in a while, you get a work of art whose backstory and future potential nearly eclipse the actual experience. Take, for example, The Abbot's Book, one of the first pieces of VR I saw at Sundance Film Festival. The Abbot's Book is a Gothic horror experience played on the HTC Vive, a brief journey through a network of sinister catacombs in the company of a taciturn monk. Did I mention it comes with an actual book?
According to creator Michael Conelly, The Abbot's Book began as a piece of fiction he wrote in 1989 — a novella about a family seduced by ancient evil. Set in 17th-century Italy, it explores the perennially potent theme of intergenerational ruin, centered on a book that tempts its readers with a horrifying kind of eternal life.
Pure environmental wandering isn't an unusual idea, but it tends to be seen in experiences that are a few hours long at most, like seminal "walking game" Dear Esther. Even the non-traditional Telltale games are almost nonstop cinematic events and conversations, and Amnesia developer Frictional relies on puzzles, jump scares, and fragments of books and diaries to draw players through its worlds. Has anyone done something this big that's purely explorational? "I don't think anyone is telling a narrative" in that way, he says, so The Abbot's Tale will be the first.
The greatest strength of The Abbot's Book is the book itself, which was published several years ago, and is an enjoyable and evocative piece of horror in its own right. It has the feel of some old role-playing game manual, combining a novella with hand-drawn illustrations from various artists, character profiles, and alternate story ideas that seem to be making their way into the VR experience. So while I'm unsure on the future of The Abbot's Book, Conelly has at the very least made a compelling case for its place in interactive horror.